I finally did it! I painted and distressed my dining room table and I didn't hate it =)
I've been talking to my hubby about painting the table white for quite some time. Then, I wanted to add a little character to it by distressing it. Surprisingly, he didn't object. That, however, was months ago BUT we finally got around to doing it last week.
The process took about 5 days, but it was worth it. Here's how it went.
This was the original color of our wood:
The first thing we did was sand the entire table with 100 grit sandpaper.
Next, we wiped all the dust off really well with a moist towel (NOT WET).
The next step was to paint the table white. We chose Swiss Coffee as a result of a Youtube tutorial that used the same color. It worked well.
We did two coats of that 2 hours apart from each other to let it sit in. When it was dry, we started distressing it.
After we got it where we wanted it, we stained it.
Following the instructions on the bottle, we stained it with two coats 15 minutes apart. We then waited 72 hours before putting on the extremely toxic glaze that seals it. It was a necessary evil.
I used gloves and a face mask while using the toxic products. I hated not being able to go non-toxic or natural for this, but unfortunately, I found nothing.
Here are the products we used: