Farmhouse / Barn house Table

Good afternoon everyone!

I wanted to share my farmhouse, AKA “barn house” table DIY project. I decided to redo our family table. I have ALWAYS loved our family table and so many memories have been made at this table, but with a new house it only seems fitting to get a new table. Right? Well instead of getting a whole new table I gave ours a “facelift”.

Its hard to see, but this was the before picture. Excuse the mess and the ugly rent house floors, but I wasn’t planning ahead with this DIY project.

September 12, 2015 kids, grandkids, and friends gathered for breakfast

Here is a better view with the legs. Just shows you how many memories this table was around for. This was our first house we built and my sons birthday party…. He is 19 now 🙁

The one in the blue is now 19 years old!

So we moved the table to the garage at our wonderful rent house and started the sanding process!! I sanded, sanded, sanded, and did I mention sanded? The top of the table had to be fine sanded and the legs I just rough sanded.

Let the staining begin… I looked at paint stains for days and finally decided on Minwax Gel Stain in Hickory from Home Depot. I applied 2 coats of this with a clean cloth and then began the work on the legs.

BTW I love the gel stain, super easy to use!

Then for the legs I applied 2 coats of Rust-oleum Chalked paint in linen white, also from Home Depot. I love the chalk paint! First time using it (minus back in the day when we actually made chalk boards out of it). It was so clean and matte.

I honestly love the look, even without distressing it.

Distressing was the most stressful part of the process (well mentally; physically sanding was the most distressing:). I watched videos and researched Pinterest and finally decided that I had to have Annie Sloan wax, like the rest of the Pinterest world uses! Having no clue where to buy it I did the logical thing and Googled it… Google knows all. It directed me to the Annie Sloan Stockists page where I used my zip code and found it in a awesome store close to my work. This store is called Painted Tree Vintage Market and had the cutest products. My run in and get the wax trip turned into a 2 hour, wish I had more money, shopping trip! I purchased the Annie Sloan clear wax and the dark wax (along with a few additional items that I didn’t plan on).

I was torn between the dark wax and black wax, but figured the dark (being more brown) would go better with the table top. I applied the clear first, let it dry and then applied the dark.

I made sure the dark was deep in the creases and distressed areas of the wood. Like this..