Before & After: Kitchen Table

Well friends, this is long overdue. I was working with a wonderful client back in October (gasp) on updating her kitchen table and I took some photographs to share with you. The client had actually come on one of my furniture painting workshops earlier in the year and wanted to tackle her kitchen table at home. The only problem being it was rather a daunting project to tackle alone. 

The rest of the kitchen and dining area had been recently transformed during an incredible renovation project but the table was left sticking out like a sore thumb. 

I think that is one of the brilliant advantages of painting furniture, you can take something that is still so functional and useful and update it to fit with your new interior design. The client loved the size, shape and proportion of the table so painting it was a total no-brainer. 

This is the table "before" we went to work on it. We used chalk paints as usual, and spent a few hours mixing different colour tones and consistencies to work out which one was best. 

The additional challenge aside from the size was that the table is covered in an oak veneer which was highly varnished. 

Normally, with chalk paints you can paint straight onto any surface, however with this table, we saw the the varnish come through slightly and discolour the lighter tones we mixed. Therefore, we added more grey until we were happy with the dried result.

We worked on the table together for a day and half and I was lucky enough to bring Alfie with me to play with the client's two beautiful golden retrievers. Naturally he made himself at home and I had to share these for my lovely friend Kimberly who is a big AlfiePug fan.

Here are a few stages of the painting progress:

And below is the finished table, as you can see we finished quite late into the evening so the photograph is not great. I think it is a real transformation though and the grey works so well with the blue light shade above.

The client had the really inspired idea to do the legs a darker shade of grey which gave the table a bit of character and depth and worked perfectly with the new design of the kitchen / dining area.

We finished the table with clear wax and polished it up. Waxing such a large surface area evenly is always a challenge students have at the workshop, but I have to say, having two people working side by side definitely helps.

What do you think of the finished result? Have you tried a similar furniture painting project at home?