Triumph!

Jody called about a month ago.  She had a table in her school room that was too big for the room and wanted to know if we would like to trade for the dining table we were using.  Our table comfortable seats 4, a little tricky with our growing family of 6!  Unfortunately, there was a catch.  Her table had a bad finish, as well as some traces of paper permanently afixed to the sticky finish.  But, ever the adventurer that I am, I thought "How hard could it be to refinish a table?" So we made the trade.

Well, the job turned out to be a little trickier than I had first imagined.  Stripping was easy, and kinda fun.  As was staining.  I didn't love sanding the whole surface, but it wasn't too bad.  The problem came when I tried to put the 2nd coat of polyurethane on.  Remember high school chemistry (maybe it was even grade school) when you learned that oil and water don't mix?  I kinda forgot that part.  Or at least forgot to apply it to my table.  Oops!  After attempting to wash my brush with water, I reapplied my varnish.  It did NOT like the water in the brush! So after my lovely table had been stained to look like this

It ended up with a huge white streak across one side.  Needless to say, I was less than pleased.  So after debating for most of the weekend whether or not to leave it, I finally decided to bite the bullet and strip and stain it again.  In the end, the extra work was worth doing.  And today, we finally got to eat at our new table!  We all fit, and the food fits too.  We even have extra leaves for when we have guests.  I can't wait!