Creating Our Farmhouse Table

When we initially extended our home we always knew we would be creating a dining/sitting room combo in the open plan area. As I am one of 8, we always knew that just having a family tea would be like a party so the table we had was going to be quite important.

Not long after we were married, Rob's parents had a huge house renovation. This was a big project and with all big house projects they had some massive changes that resulted in them removing the original wooden floor from their dining room. Rob's sure their house was built in the 40s so this wood is pretty old and also very good quality so the builder, whom is also a good family friend, decided to save as much as possible and to not to damage it in the removal.

Rob's parents used a large part of it to make a garden table to sit on their new patio. We were offered the thinner cut off to use for a garden table as at the time our house was still in its original state and it wouldn't have fit in our kitchen. 

Fast forward a few years to our own re-design and out the wood came. We had never turned it into a table; it had just sat in the shed ready for the opportunity. 

Rob, in all of his cleverness, created  the 'housing joint' legs in the traditional cross design. He made this out of the joists from our old wooden floor that we had to take out. Our wooden floor became the decking outside our French doors. Nothing goes to waste!

With the legs on, the table was complete. It was long and thin, so perfect for not becoming a dominant piece in our open space. The only thing that I never liked about it was the colour. The builder had varnished it in yacht varnish so it would survive the outside weather better, but that was such a heavy orange stain it never went with the other wood topped items around the house. Consequently, I forever had it dressed with table cloths that covered the whole thing. This was never a problem, I just made my own tablecloths and I changed them as I wanted. 

Etta was born one week prior to us 'completing' our project so at the time we had a new baby, a two year old and all other bits and pieces that come with such a house renovation. The table went in and has been perfect, but this weekend (1.5 years later) I decided I was going to strip it back to the original pine.

We got some paint stripper from Toolstation and followed the instructions. I found that after leaving it for an hour it was not going to be as easy as I had thought. After scraping off the paste and seeing that the smallest amount had been removed I got out our belt sander and started with that. I gave it a good going over but didn't sand loads off; just enough to see that I was getting into the varnish. I then did another coat of paste and left it for another hour. The final sand then took about an hour of me just going back and forwards, doing a section at a time and really cleaning it off. It wasn't as stubborn as I thought but there was no chance that using a scrapper (as the tub suggests) was going to get me anywhere. Looking at it now I think I could probably take off another layer and take it down further but as it gets used I will sand it occasionally anyway.

The finished result is fantastic. It has completely changed the look of the table and the pale pine now matches the other pine topped furniture in the house. With my lovely Emma Bridgewater tray full of cups or my Sophie Allport table runner my country house in the city is becoming more and more the house I dream about!

Original

New

Want to create the same look?

Toolstation paint stripper

Emma Bridgewater

Sophie Allport

Post by Emily