Painting the Eat-in Counter

As I mentioned before, we moved into our first house in late September. It is a fairly new house (2009) so there aren't really any necessary or large home improvement projects, only work that makes our house our home, not just a place we live in. The house is full of our stuff, but sometimes I still feel like it isn't really our house because there are signs of the previous owners. One of these areas is the kitchen eat-in counter.

The color isn't my favorite and it has dings and scratches from where their baby's highchair sat.

So, I took some green paint I found in the garage, leftover from the wall behind the fireplace when the house was built, and got to work. The project took about three hours to tape and paint (two coats). The only cost was a new paint roller pad, about $3.00. 

So what do you think of the change? I don't think it matches the counters very well, and I know we need to get bar height stools, but it is now MY counter, not one belonging to the family who lived here before us.

Coffee Station Beginnings

I wanted a dedicated station for coffee in our dining room, but was having trouble finding the type of table I liked (vintage-y or dark wood, counter height, and ample storage space, kind of like this) for a good price. On my way into town during a blizzard, and obviously not driving as cautiously as I should, I saw a potential table in the window of a used furniture shop and decided to stop in the next day to take a look. It was only table height and didn't have much storage... but it was only $50 so I bought it! Eventually it will get moved to the living room as a sofa table after we find the perfect coffee station table, but it will work great in the dining room for now.

We have that same honey oak wood on our floors and cabinets, which is already way too much orange, so it was decided to re-stain the tabletop to a dark wood. I unscrewed the top, stripped the old stain off, cleaned and sanded the wood, beat it up with an assortment of hard objects for a worn look, stained, sanded, stained, sanded, sealed, sanded, re-screwed, and changed the knob. And here is the finished result:

The knob is from the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I bought 10 or so for about $.25 each. The others are currently being used as a face on a snowman. :) 

Here is where you can see some of the different marks made by beating the table up, using a hammer, screwdriver, wire brush, bag of nails, etc. The stain settles in the indents, leaving a darker color.

I want to put overhead storage shelves in, but as this won't be our "forever" table, I will wait for now. And yes, we do have a coffee station before a kitchen table. C'est la vie!

What do you think?