Dining Table Makeover - The Reveal

(If you missed the initial dining table post, find it here.)

Since my hubby gave us a deadline on this project by inviting some coworkers over for lunch yesterday, the dining table project has been occupying most of my time. It was a lot of work, but totally worth it! Check out this transformation:

 Before

After

Obviously, I painted it all black. The arm chairs (in the top photo) will have a white accent around the seats, but I haven't finished those yet, so they're not in the second photo. I ordered the fabric from FabricGuru.com. It is Premier Prints Nicole Twill. Not specifically upholstery fabric, but Dave and I both loved it, so we went for it. After upholstering the seats, I applied two coats of ScotchGard so that we can (hopefully) avoid stains. I plan to ScotchGard the cushions regularly since we have small children (who love Nutella, so it ends up on everything in our house). The cushions themselves are recycled from our old chair-top cushions. They were still in decent shape, so I removed the fabric cover from them and reused the foam. I got an insider tip from a lady at the craft store who told me that if I need to buy more foam, to buy it from a home improvement store where it doesn't cost $33/yard. Good advice! I only had to buy foam for two of the six chairs, so I didn't spend too much on them.

If you're thinking of doing your own furniture makeover, I have a few tips:

1. Sand thoroughly! By this, I mean to sand and sand and sand, no matter how many sheets of sandpaper you go through. The better your sanding, the better your painting.
2. Buy a lot of cheesecloth or tack cloth to get the saw dust off the furniture before painting.
3. Turn everything upside down before your first coat of paint. This way, you paint all the bottom surfaces first. Do two coats of paint on the bottom, let it dry, then flip everything right-side-up and paint.
4. Plan to do at least two full coats of paint. After it dries, find some really good light to inspect your paint job. I was amazed how many touch-ups I had to do once I saw my chairs in the sunlight. 
5. Be extremely careful with your polyurethane finish. I used an old brush and ended up with some bubbles in my finish on the table top. Being inexperienced, I thought I could scrape them off and touch up that one spot. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. So use a NEW foam brush for each coat and sand between coats. I now have more work to do to get my table top smooth since I didn't know this in advance!

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