How I Whitewashed a Dining Room Table

Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel. In this episode we are refinishing this massive dining table. It's been kicking around in my garage now for quite some time and I thought it would be a good time to get started on it. So it was not an easy project, I'll tell you that for free. I'm on day four here, just finishing it off now as I start the video, but let's see what we First I'm using some paint and varnish stripper. I'm going to use that on the center leaves. The outside parts do not need any stripper. I'm just going to sand them down. So I used the rest of the stripper I had and I just rubbed it on and let it sit there for about a half hour. Since I used the last bit of stripper I had, I probably would have done a second coat of stripper. But oh well, I ran out and let's just do the scraping and then we can get started on sanding. Before we can actually start sanding, we need to clean off the old stripper residue. So I'm using some mineral spirits and steel wool and cloth and we'll just clean up the tabletop. You don't need to use stripper at all if you don't want to. I probably should have just used the sander, probably would have saved me some time. So this process I started off with a 120 grit sandpaper and then I finished off with a 220 grit sandpaper. When sanding a dining table you really should go with the wood grain. If you don't go with the grain you might see scratches or your sander might make some marks that will be noticeable. You want to avoid that and just go with the grain. Remember that dining tables are pretty big so when you're sanding down a full tabletop surface it's probably going to take some time. It took me I'd say a couple hours just to do this tabletop. Just from sanding one section of this table, you can see how much dust landed on the table and is in the air. So I recommend wearing a dusk mask or a respirator of some sort because you don't want to be breathing this stuff in. The reason it took me so long to sand is because the leaves were not sanding very easily. It's because I stripped and the residue was still on top and it makes it difficult to sand. So if you're going to strip, strip all the way and if you're not going to strip then sanding will be a lot easier. Where I didn't strip and where the table was pretty worn, the old finish came off pretty quick. So if your table is like that then your project might be a little bit quicker than mine was. After sanding the tabletop I sand around the edges and I also sand the apron and the pedestals of the table. Even though we're painting these parts, just scuffing them up with some sandpaper makes the paint adhere a lot better. There was so much dust going on that I just grabbed my vacuum and just started vacuuming the table, the floors, and everything around to get cleaned up. And then I wiped everything up with a damn cloth right quick. Before I could start spray priming the project, I grabbed some tape and I just go around the table's edge just to protect it so I don't paint the tabletop by accident. Here's the primer I'm using, it's a Rust-Oleum Flat White Primer. Finding a good spray-on primer is good so you can prevent bleeds in the wood. I had a few people comment on a recent video and they said the good primers are Bind, Bullseye, and I use this one. So if you want to give those a try, a spray-on primer, go for it. After priming and doing some touch-up spots on certain areas that might bleed, I rip the tape off and now we can get started on our first coat of stain. I'm using Early American, so let's test it out here and then let's throw it on the whole tabletop. After a couple of minutes of letting it sit there, I grab a clean cloth and wipe up the stain. To get the color a little bit darker, I'm using ebony wood finish by Minwax. So instead of letting this dry, I'm just going to throw this stain on right away. So I let that stain sit on there for a few minutes and then I just wiped it all up just like I did with the Early American. Since it was late, I decided to let the stain dry overnight and come back to start the whitewashing in the morning. All right, now it's time to start the whitewash process. So you take your water, I just use the top of an old paint can or spray can, and then we're going to use some linen white chalked ultramatte paint by Rust-Oleum. We're going to take the same amount of paint as we did water and pour it into our little painter's cup and then we're going to stir it up for a minute or so. As you can see, it's a pretty watery substance, so it's going to be pretty easy to put on and wipe off. Now I'm just using a regular synthetic paintbrush, so I'm just dipping it in my wash bucket and just applying it all over the tabletop surface. I'm just going with the wood grain so I know the white paint is getting inside those cracks. If I were to do this process again, I would have whitewashed the table in sections just so I could wipe off the wash a bit easier. It dried up pretty quickly on me, so I recommend doing that if you're going to give it a try. So I grabbed a damp cloth and a dry cloth and I just wiped up the wash to get a look that I that I liked. Since this table was huge, I did have the wash dry up pretty good on me and the damp cloth wasn't even taking it off, so I just grabbed some more wash, applied it over, and just wiped it up. After I wiped everything up, for some reason I didn't like it, so I threw on another layer of wash, but I won't make you watch the full process. But this time around, I'm letting the whitewash completely dry and then I'm going to sand it for the whitewash effect. While we're waiting for the top to dry, we're going to paint the apron and the legs with the linen white Rust-Oleum. I don't know if anyone noticed, but one of the pedestal legs are actually backwards, so I'll have that flipped around before we're done here, don't worry. I also grabbed a skinnier paintbrush and I'm going to paint around this edge here on the table and we're going to put the white paint right around. Before moving on to coat two, I did some touch-ups so there were no bleeds with the Rust-Oleum spray-on primer. After letting everything dry, I came back and now it's time to start sanding the whitewash to get the effect we're looking for. I'm using 320 grit sanding paper and I just lay it over a sanding sponge and then you can get started sanding. This sanding took hours and a lot of sandpaper, I'll tell you that. So after I finished sanding, I just wiped up all the dust. So on the apron and the pedestal legs, we're just going to apply some finishing wax. After the natural wax, I'm not going to let it dry or anything, I'm just going to apply this dark bare wax right away. I'm simply just brushing on the dark wax and making sure it gets in the little crack so when I go to wipe it off, it'll have a nice antique look. Basically, you're just buffing and rubbing the wax until you get the look that you're looking for. It must have took me a bit more time to apply the wax because when I was rubbing it off the pedestals, it was a lot harder but it turned out pretty decent. Take a look. Now for a top coat on the table, I'm using polycrylic. This stuff is clear and easy to apply so I'm just grabbing a synthetic brush and I'm going to rub this on top of the piece. I'm just going back and forth over the top. I'm not really following the wood grain. You can give it a shot if you want but since it's so clear, you can't really see any brush strokes so I wasn't worried here. With this product, you should apply three to four coats for a durable finish and in between coats, I use a 220 grit sanding sponge. Don't forget to wipe away any dust before applying the next coat. Apply your three or four coats and follow the same steps after each one but we're going to do one more thing before we finish up here. We're just going to apply a coat of dark wax on the table edge all the way around. We're going to wipe it on and then we're going to wipe it off. We just want the edge to look just like the apron and the pedestal so everything matches up nicely. Let's take a look at the table one more time before we refinished it. It was in pretty rough condition on the top I must say and here's what the table looks like after it's fully refinished and here's what the table looks like without the two leaves installed so if you like this project guys, don't forget to hit that thumbs up and subscribe if you don't want to miss any more future Furniture Flips. Thanks for watching everyone!