Home Work: New Knobs and Refinishing the Dining Room Table

Visitors be warned: 

Houseguests frequently get put to work on whatever project we are in the middle of! 

This week we took advantage of Grandpa J's experience carving wooden sculptures to help us with refinishing the dining room table. We spent several hours sanding. 

We tried to find a cabinetry maker who would let us put it through the planer, but no one a). had the right width, and if the did then b). they did not want to put anything through it that they had not made themselves.  After about 6 hours we had all the old finish sanded off.

We sanded the underside of the table top with fine sandpaper and then started testing stains.  I was looking for either a dark walnut color or a golden natural color.  Those are the two colors that we already have in the dining room.

The first stains we tested were valspar's ebony, kona, and dark walnut:

 We tried minwax weathered oak, valspar weathered gray, minwax dark walnut, provincial, jacobean, and dark walnut with weathered oak over top.  ALL look quite orangey... these boards are reclaimed lumber from a salvage yard.  I think they might actually be redwood, not pine.

This section has kona layered over with gray, classic grey (opaque), minwax dark walnut layered over with gray, weathered oak, and valspar navy.  Grandpa John advised us that cool blue or gray could help cancel out the orangey-ness, which it definitely does, but some of the grain on this softwood just does not want to absorb much stain.

 I am still not satisfied that we have the right combination.  Tomorrow I will try a kona-ebony mixture and also just applying the clear varnish to the natural wood.  I keep saying "just one more try and then I will give up"... still trying things though.

The knobs redo in the kitchen was much more straight forward and I love how it looks.  The darker knobs tie everything together and are soooo much more my style.  When we moved in all the cupboards and drawers had these silver knobs. They just blended into the wood and didn't add much.  Here is a listing picture:

We put cup pulls on the drawers and these dark iron knobs on the cabinets.

Here is picture of the new style.  I need a cleaner kitchen and a better camera to take a panorama. But you get the idea.  Lovely!