The Kitchen Table

Just before Christmas I decided to renovate our 'dining room' in the only way a renter can - by moving furniture.  We have two bookcases in our lounge/dining area and I moved one over behind the kitchen table so that all of our cookbooks and magazines have a home.  That meant moving the table too.  To cut a long day of moving furniture around on my own (freaking out because I didn't think I'd get it done before Mum got home from work) short, we ended up with more space and better organisation.

BUT I wasn't satisfied with that.  Oh no, I had to go one step further and decided that I should paint the chairs at the table because they looked a bit old and beaten.  Because this blog wasn't originally going to have craft projects, I didn't take a before photo of our kitchen table.  Sorry!  But because my camera (read 'my mobile') is a bit less than great, I don't think it makes all that much difference.  They were painted a kind of shiny, easy-clean, white that was fine when they were first done (Mum did a great job).  We decided on a sunny buttery lemon colour, and ended up getting Hagley Park from Dulux (for some reason on the website, this looks kind of peach...  but it's not).  It took me two weeks to finish them because each needed two coats, I didn't have a bench to put them on and so had to use my lap to prop them up, and because we had issues with paint brushes.  But now they look lovely!  They just need new cushion covers; this is this weekend's task.

BUT (again), I'm not satisfied with it.  I want to do the table now.  We were in Albany a few weekends ago to get the material for the cushions and I spotted this in Early Settler:

 

I love this.  I don't know if you can see just how cool this is, but it's stripped back and stained or painted a kind of rustic cool gray.  They then used a big and a few small silver shiny pots, terracotta pots painted distressed gray, and leafy green plants with white flowers.  They had these ugly wicker chairs spoiling the loveliness, so I tried to chop them out of the picture.  This is now my aim.  We have two tables and Mum insists that the one in the garage would be easier to strip than the one we have at the table now, but I've just put all this effort into organising the place around it.  We shall see how it goes....