Dining Table Make-Over

After years of wanting to do something different with my dining room table and it desperately needing a make-over I finally found the style I wanted to do and set the time aside to do it.  Here's the before/after results.

Mostly I didn't want to paint over the top smooth/shiny wood top of the table because I wasn't confident I could get as durable of a finish. But it was the legs and edges that were getting so scratched, weathered and ready to be painted.

I've never been a fan of wood (brown) colored furniture or things so when I came across a few pins on pinterest where they painted the wood white all but the top and left that wood giving it a French/Shabby/Chic look I fell in love!

I have both a dining table with benches and my grandma's hutch that I want to have this look since they would both be in a dining room area.

This is my table project, the hutch will be done in a couple of weeks and I'll share it.

I got flat paint in the shade of white I wanted, then made it into chalk paint by mixing:
5 T of plaster of Paris with 3T cold water and mixing well,
then adding that to 2 cups of paint.

It was the perfect amount of paint for the table and benches. I did 3 coats and found that a brush was a LOT easier than the sponge brush I tried for the first coat.

Once it was dry I painted on a couple coats of Polyurathane that I had picked up at Home Depot with the help of one of their great employees in the paint department.  This is the one I bought and used:


I'm really happy with how it turned out! Can't wait to have the hutch done as well!