Two Tone Dining Table Makeover

Today, I will share a makeover carried out a long time ago by my friend Chrystele: the Two Tone Dining Table. Many years later, I’m still a huge fan of this makeover. In my opinion, this project is the very essence of furniture upcycling. You find a piece that nobody wants and upgrade it to a more modern and unique piece of furniture.

The table was already dismantled when Chrystele bought it. But you can guess how outdated is was just by looking at the color.

The table top is made of thick oak veneer top coated with a brown varnish finish.

It has 4 solid wood turned legs and a runner in the middle of the table. This is a good quality rustic piece, outdated, but in pristine condition. This table really deserved a second life.

Table of Contents

# 1 – Sanding the rustic table

First things first, Chrystele sanded the table top to natural wood. The table top was quite big so she chose to use a belt sander instead of a smaller orbital sander.

Belt sanders are high power usually tools used for sanding very rough surfaces. I would not recommend using a belt sander to sand veneer furniture since you might easily sand through the veneer. If you want to know more about how to sand veneer, make sure to check this blog post.

On this particular project however, veneer was pretty thick (0.4 inch), so using a belt sander was fine. Table legs were sanded by hand.

# 2 – Painting the two tone dining table

Chrystele decided to paint the table legs with a dark color paint. She also wanted to paint two lateral stripes on the table top to give character to this piece of furniture.

For a better result, she applied some masking tape on each side of the table top.

She then painted the table legs and the 2 strips with a dark grey paint. She applied two coats of paint.

The entire piece was sealed using a matte polyacrylic.

As a matter of fact, when it comes to seal dining table, polycrylic is preferable to wax. Polycrylic creates a wipeable hard finish and is best suited for dining tables, coffee tables, sideboards, etc.

Here is the final result! I’m really in love with this easy to do makeover. The outdated brown rustic piece is now a charming two tone farmhouse style table.