11 May DIY Farmhouse Table with Chalk Paint

This table was given to me from my mom not long after we moved into this house. I love the solid wood turned legs and thought it had great potential for our little eat-in kitchen area. Right away, I decided to paint it white. I really wanted that farm table look but wasn’t sure what to do about the top since it wasn’t a solid wood top. It’s a composite-type material with a laminate coating so I couldn’t sand it down and stain it.

This is the only photo I could find of the before. I need to be better about taking before pictures. Sometimes I jump right into something without stopping to snap a pic. Here’s the best I could do. This is when the table was at my parent’s house. We lived there for a short time between selling our previous house and buying our current home. My son was sitting there with my dad “watching” golf 🙂

Here’s when I started painting it. I used a primer and then went over it with Sherwin Williams Alabaster.

Anyway, the white was great at first but soon started showing all the dirt. I had made a few mistakes with this table. One of which, was that I used a gloss finish. This was not okay! I’m not a fan of shiny paint! So to try to fix it, I sanded it lightly and went over it in a semi-gloss which helped a little but still too shiny for me.

The polycrylic I used was great at first but over time (and we’re talking only a year or two) started showing all the grime and started actually rubbing off. I mean, seriously the next photo is um, well… gross! You can see where the polycrylic started to rub off. Not good! Never mind the chips and dings in the paint. It also doesn’t even look white. Ick!

Here’s a side view showing the shine. Again, not my thang.

This was my chance to try again so I began brainstorming about what I wanted to do with it next. I thought I’d go all over grey. Which I did at first. Here it is with two coats of Annie Sloan French Linen chalk paint.

This was feeling too flat to me so I decided to experiment…

I lightly dipped a dry brush into a dark walnut stain that I had on hand and made light strokes over the chalk paint and only on the top of the table. Then, I used a rag to really blend it in to make it resemble wood grain.

I was liking this look for the top so decided to go over the grey legs in white chalk paint to make it look more like a farm table. Then, went over the legs in Annie Sloan clear wax to seal.

To seal the top, I used Minwax Spar Urethane which is the same poly I used for our dining room table and is holding up well.

What do you think? Have you painted a white table and had it hold up? How did you seal the top? I’d love to hear! 🙂