The 5th Brick House On The Right: Stained something other then my Labor Day white tee-shirt

Back to this table..

When we last left off it looked like this.

I will admit having all that bare wood showing made me smile .. it took a lot of work to get it to this point!

I knew I wanted to stain it a nice dark color, something like Dark Walnut from Minwax to help off set the bright white of the legs and benches.

I picked up this tiny can, the larger can of that color was sold out, for 4 bucks at Lowe's. I already had hundreds of these foam brushes on hand and the cloth is an old burp rag.

I read lots of online help about staining and I read the can .. seamed pretty straight forward. Paint on, wait, wipe off.

I started with just one corner . if I hated it or did something wrong I wanted to have to sand the lease amount of table! The instructions said to let it sit 15 minutes .. but not so long it dried. Well after 3 minutes it was drying!! So I was only able to work in small sections like this, paint on, blink a few times, rub off!

The trick I learned was to watch the seams .. don't stain over something already stained because the overlap will end up darker. I think if you look at the table as a whole you can see my seams .. but its not that noticeable maybe I am the only one who can even see it because I know where it is.

And here she is all stained!

The drying time says 8 hours.

I left the table inside until the following morning and then it sat in the hot sun for another 3 hours so I was pretty sure it was dry!

This is Poly, shes about to become my new best friend. She promises to protest, keep shiny, make it easy to clean and look gorgeous for years to come! I also splurged for a set of Purdy Brushes. I am using a satin finish poly because .. well because I wanted to.

The instructions on the poly are pretty clear, paint on, wait 2 hours, lightly sand, do it again, and again, and again, and again .. between 3 and 5 times. I planned on 5 coats, one per child ... seamed like a good plan.

Each coat took just 10 minutes to apply. Minus the wait time this step took maybe an hour.

And here she is!