kitchen table and chairs reveal!

The Morrices are really owning this season of Spring. It could just be in comparison-  because for the last two Spring Cleaning seasons I've been pregnant & useless (except for the whole "growing a human being" part, that's a pretty useful party trick). But either way, I'm feeling good about our accomplishments. 

Remember the Spring Cleaning list? It's been updated and it's looking pretty empty :)

Or the Spring Projects list? Crossing a lot of things off that list and it feels REALLY good.

If you're a hyperlink clicker, you'll notice two major things are off the to-do list: painting our kitchen table and chairs AND cabinets. 

And if you're not, well you must wonder why I often have random words or sentences underlined and another colour.

 Loads of pics to come of the kitchen, but for now, I present to you my old/new kitchen table!

BEFORE: 

a classic, good quality, family table. enjoyed greatly by us and our kids,

passed down to us from our step-mom-in-law (thanks, Deb!)

but, not really matching any other wood in the house, and not officially "me". whatever that means.

so we sanded the heck out of the top of the table (this took hours) and stained it dark walnut. then painted the legs and base of the table and spray-painted the chairs.

AFTER:

"me", fo sho.

now, lets get real here. 

I follow a lot of DIY blogs and they often reveal these projects and make it look SO EASY. After all, when you see a before and after pic, you don't really know what the in-between looks like. Or how long it takes. Or how much it costs. And that really bothers me because it inspires me (which is great) but then I start something and am like WHAT THE HECK. How come Sherry and Katie don't tell me these things? So here you go, so you can make an educated decision if you want to do a DIY similar to this:

time - this took 3 LONG evenings. like 6pm-1am type evenings. we watched a lot of West Coast hockey games that I'm usually asleep for...

effort - this was hard. the goop that took off the varnish didn't do the best job and we sanded for a long time. and the clean up effort was almost as much as the project effort. sanding means wood dust. everywhere. 

money - this project was not free. and in some people's books, maybe not even cheap. something those DIY blogs don't always tell you is that spray-paint COSTS MONEY. It was around $7/can and each can only did one chair. And we used spray primer at $8/can and used three cans for four chairs. So with the paint, goop, stain, and spray paint, it probably cost around $75. the table and chairs were free but the DIY wasn't.

I'm really happy with the results, even though it was more time consuming, hard work, and money than I anticipated. Our house is really coming together and I'm a happy mama :)