Tea Staining Wood

Have you ever heard of staining wood with tea? Neither had until I got a free table. 

I loved my other table. It's still sitting off to the side waiting to be sold actually. But the drop sides led to the surface being a little uneven and the top wasn't real wood. When I told someone had an antique that had a bad finish and needed some work that was going to Salvation Army if I didn't want it, I jumped. 

I didn't know what to do with it so I left it as is while I thought about it and made sure the size worked for me. It had lots of scratches and water rings, which made me feel not guilty about possibly painting it. 

I finally decided I'd paint the legs white and stain the top. I found this great looking grey stain that I would stain it with after I got the original stain off.

It was a super super messy job. Note the floors.

I was covered in oak-colored dust. There is something about sanding furniture that helps me find myself. I got lots of great finding myself done and good music listened to. 

This was it when I was done. Isn't it soooo pretty? I wanted to leave it like that but knew I'd need to protect it if we'd be eating on it.

So I got my gloves and brush and went to work

Here it is after getting it all on. It was really close to the cabinet color so I was hoping it would coordinate well

Here it is after rubbing off the stain. I HATED it. Maybe this is someone's cup of tea, but it's not mine. 

So I was back to square one. And I remembered my french doors directly behind the table and realized it'd make my life and clean up MUCH easier if I just dragged the table out there to sand. The grey stain was way harder to get off than the oak for sure. After 2 days of sanding I got the table mostly back to its bare glory. My mom sent me a link about tea stain as a possible idea for the table. 

So I grabbed a glass jar, some steel wool, and vinegar. 

Rip/pull apart the steel wool and pour vinegar over it to completely cover it. Loosely put the lid on and put it in a dry cool place for at least 24 hours. 

While I was waiting the pets and I sanded

Taped and painted

and moved it back in

Again I adored the rough top but needed to protect it. I decided that if the tea thing didn't work I'd sand it and leave it as is. 

Next you brew some strong hot tea. After it's cooled brush it on. 

This was it going on

Here it is after it dries. The top went back to the way it looked before. Here is the "stain" after it's ready. It looks no different. I was quite sure that it wouldn't work since it didn't smell any different from vinegar and was clear. How nice to work with something easy on the lungs!

Here it looks after brushing it on. I knew that it really worked when I saw the marks that it left when I accidentally touched it to the white paint. It didn't come off either! 

Here it is about 5 minutes after brushing it on to one side of the table 

Here it is after 15:

And after an hour:

Doesn't it look good? I love that it's natural and rustic and not 100% painted like the rest of the kitchen

After it dried I gave it a couple of coats of polyacrylic

I love it. It's weathered but slick looking

And it has some really cool looking depth

It was so easy and fume free to tea stain! I will definitely do that before Minwax next time!

Bar Stool Makeover

Since I got this table I've needed a seat for it

I was looking at something like these from Target:

When I remembered my old bar stools:

They were out in the middle of the basement for a long long time. They are really high though. If I wanted to use them something had to change

We don't have a saw but my brother did. I marked 7" up on the stools and my brother came over and chopped

They were a little unsteady with the second set of crossbars not there. But, we needed to trim those down to fit into a narrower place. So we pulled out the traditional saw and got sawing:

Then I made some paint. I wanted this to be another free project and I thought grey would work perfectly down there. I pulled out my old samples from this project and started mixing

This is it  after two coats. I didn't care for how flat it was though and wanted to coat it with poly acrylic 

See how much better it looks with a gloss? (and that we still haven't sold the dumb couch)

My drill battery is having some issues at the moment so I haven't reattached the crossbars so this is the 95% done after-shot! 

What do you think? I'm loving the free makeover!

Homey Update

We now have wedding pictures up!

I got them printed on canvas using a coupon code online and am thrilled with how streamlined they came out looking!

I also did a speedy update to our "front hall" closet. I don't have a closet right inside the door, but this is across the bathroom and those frames in the little hall between there and the kitchen. It's under the stairs and holds our coats and shoes:

This was it when I saw the house for the first time:

This was it when I was trying to get a handle on all of my shoes and put them all in shoeboxes:

 And here they are away with a little shoe rack on the bottom:

Well that wasn't cutting it… Especially after I married someone with more clothes and shoes than me! So I went through the boxes. I hadn't really opened more than one or two of them since doing this project two years ago! The rack got the most use. So I purged. Lots of shoes got donated. 

Then I installed elfa to make the most of this space. These shoe racks glide out. The bottom one is for heels and the others are for flats. I did this one night after I got home from work around 11:00 pm. It was super easy and I managed to not wake Chris up!

This is it after I put all of the shoes Chris and I had left. The basket on the top right is for hats and gloves and stuff. I have very few purses. They're not my thing. None of these are probably in style even… Oh well! I have room if I ever get trendy! I have lots of extra empty shoe boxes for future shoe shopping too!

 During the summer I keep my boots in boot boxes under the guest bed. During the fall and winter they hang from the closet rod so they can keep their shape from these guys. It's an oddly deep closet and I wish I could've elfa'd the whole closet, but leaving the rod further forward made more sense. 

 I also got this really cool fireplace from my brothers for my birthday:

 I love how modern it is and we tote it wherever we want a romantic fire

 And now it's living here in the dining room:

 I also got a kind of shadowy picture from our wedding up on one of the walls:

So those are our recent homey updates!