Halfway finished!! I'm getting so excited about it. Work has made me pretty exhausted lately but I've still managed to finish the gold-leaf on the table top. It's beaooo-ti-full.

Here's a photo of the table after I finished the staining:



And after the gold-leafing (with flash):



(without flash):



And a quick close-up of my mariner's compass rose:



I've been wanting to do a compass design on SOMETHING for a long time. When we eventually get a house, I'd imagined one (actually pointing due North) on the floor in wood inlay in the entryway. For the table, I was partially inspired by this cross-stitch design from Dracolair Creations.

Hopefully soon I can figure out how to spraypaint on my patio and finish this puppy up! I'm so excited to have it sitting center stage in my dining room. Now I need new pretty furniture to help showcase it.....

Change of plans... as usual. The stain I picked out (Jacobean) is way "blacker" than I thought it would be. It's still a brown but with lots of black tones in it and it's very dark. I think it looks great though, it just changed my plans regarding painting my design on in black paint (because it probably wouldn't show that well). So, I've switched my plans to doing the compass design in gold leaf instead.

I've finished a little less than 1/4 of the table and it's looking FABULOUS! Very "antique-y" looking. Plus, as another "happy mistake", we didn't sand down the original stain far enough apparently so there are portions that the new stain didn't take. It's very random though and makes the table look even more used.

I'll be posting updated pic as soon as I finish with the gold-leafing. Once I finish that, I'll be sanding down the legs and figuring out how to spraypaint them out on our small apartment patio without getting it all over.

Back in Italy on the base they have a "store" of sorts called the Airman's Attic. Basically, it's like a Goodwill or other thrift store but everything's free if you're a certain rank or below. Anyway, it was there that I picked up this table. I had the idea even there at the store to sand it down and re-stain/paint it. That was almost 4 years ago.

Here are some photos of the yucky, disgusting "before". The table was stained (yucky mildew-like stains, not wood stain) like this when I got it. It was used as counter space in the kitchen and now it's our dining room table. Don't worry, I usually covered it with a large tablecloth.





I started work on it last weekend. I took it apart and lugged the table top out onto the patio to sand down. Yeah... took about 30 minutes of doing that before I decided to give up and rent or borrow an electric sander from someone. Another week passed and discovered that no one had one we could borrow. So I went to Home Depot and stopped by their tool rental. The guy there tells me they no longer rent them because people would rather just spend a little extra to buy one since they were so cheap. So I bought one. A Ryobi 5" Orbital Sander and some extra hook and loop sanding pads.

A few hours of random work every 15 minutes or so and it now looks MUCH better.



The stains are still noticeable but way less obvious. I'm hoping after adding the darker stain and paint, that it'll be little more than an addition of "character" to the wood versus the nastiness it was before.



Hopefully I can get it stained all nice and pretty by the end of this week and start sanding down the legs and getting them ready for being spraypainted black. More photos and blog to follow.