Here goes nothing

This past weekend I decided I must no longer put off my DIY project - our dining room table.  We bought the table & 6 chairs when we got married almost 11 years ago.  Being a young newlywed, I didn't realize that a dining room table shouldn't be used as a drying table for clothes as well.  After about 2 -3 years of doing this, tiny pieces of the stain were coming off and I was left with an UGLY top for a table - as well as the tops of the chairs since I used those as well to dry clothes.

Since I don't really like tablecloths and I wasn't ready to go and spend $2K for a new dining room set, I thought I would make the table look new to us - MUCH cheaper!!  I went back and forth on whether to stain or paint.  After reading LOTS of different blogs and talking to my helpful hardware friend Stephanie, I decided the easiest thing would be to strip the current stain and paint.

Saturday after Brody's basketball game, I was off and running my dad's electric sander.  I am happy to say that it really wasn't that bad to sand the table and all 6 chairs.  My dad LOVES to help and offer LOTS of advice and eventually I get tired of hearing what I should be doing that I just let him to do it - ie the boys' bathroom.  My dad was warned multiple times to NOT come over while I was sanding because this was my DIY project.

Jason stayed around a little bit but for some reason Brody woke up that morning and really wanted his daddy to take him to play golf "convenient".  I actually said it was ok because I Trevor would be taking a nap soon and I would be able to get a lot done.  My dad did come over later in the process and assisted with the manual sanding - corners and such.  After about 6 hours of sanding, I was done!!

I can't wait to start on the paint this weekend and have the dining room finished.  Now if I could just decide on the color of the walls for the dining room.