Home improvements

I started a project.  My kitchen table is an Ikea Jokkmokk that was bought maybe ten years ago. There were scratches and wearing on the varnish. I've thought of redoing it for a while now, but just didn't get the inspiration until now. 

The starting point. The table is stained and varnished. I had a  palm sander and 40-grit paper on it and I started my task. Took a while to get the varnish off, but after it was off the surface I changed to 80-grit and sanded down again. 

To get it even, I sanded for a third time with 120, and smoothed it by hand with 240. All in all, the sanding process took 5 hours. 

I used a paint that wouldn't hide the grain. After the first coat had dried for two hours I sanded once more with 240 and removed the dust. Then the second coat. 

Here's a picture of the table after each step

Left is the original. Second from right is one coat and the one on the right is two coats. 

The shade of the paint is Vanilla. After I applied the first coat I decided to do the chairs as well, so I had to go shopping for more sanding paper. And of course I bought a lot more as well. 

While the second coat was drying I watched some iZombie and snacked on  blair's jalapeño cheddar chips. 

But the table top is done now, and I'll start with the chairs soon, it's too early to use the palm sander yet. It's not that noisy but I don't want to wake anyone with it. 

As you can see, the chairs look terrible...

All this manual labor ruined my nails, so I'll need to redo them as well, but not today. My house is full of dust for atleast another day.