My refinished dinning table

Back in November I started to refinish my dinning table.  I got the idea from this blog and I plan to also paint my chairs bright red once I find the time to fix them.

I think the overall lesson that I learned with the project was that sanding takes forever!!!  And you HAVE to sand it to make the stain stick!  My table had a glossy finish on it, so that made it a bit more difficult to sand, but it was worth it to spend the time on it.

Here are some of my in progress photos and some finished photos with the baby attached.  Again, I will never post photos about this if I were to wait until the table were perfectly staged... it's just not going to happen right now.

 1.  First you have to sand like crazy.  Plan on sanding for what seems like forever!  It will be worth it because then your stain will stick to the wood.  I used Minwax in Dark Walnut for my stain.

 2.  I applied my stain with a very expensive purdy brush and I wish that I had just used some paper towel or a rag because the clean up of the brush was so annoying!  I let the stain sit for a good 15 minutes before wiping the excess off and then I let it dry over night.  BTW, don't stain furniture inside in the winter...fumes all night long!  Like I said, I learned a lot from this project. :)

 3.  So, I wasn't happy with how my first coat of stain adhered, so I went back and sanded it some more and then applied more stain in my carport.  Don't forget to run a tack rag over the table before staining to get all of the dust off.  You don't want dust particles in your finish.

 Pretty!

 5. After the stain dried I lightly sanded it with 400 grit paper to smooth it out and then applied my varnish.  For the varnish you want a new or high quality brush to apply because this will be the finishing coat, or coats.  A few nice thin and even coats will do the trick with some light sanding in between and then you'll have a very pretty table!

 6.  I also painted the legs antique white just like on Katie Bower's blog and I love it!  It's more modern and fits my style and I think with my blue walls once I paint the chairs red everything will look amazing!

 
Do you think I should choose a different color for the chairs?  I'm looking for something to pop, but I'd be open to suggestions.  I'm not going to paint them until the summer when we have multiple sunny days in a row, so I still have some time to decide.