The Kitchen Table Drama

My mom was up here to visit us last week and I warned her before coming that our little project would be to paint our kitchen table. It was a table that was given to us by Andrew's sister-thanks Joy-and just needed to be touched up. I like to think that I can handle these kind of projects but this is the second one to be a little dramatic so I am going to take a break from my painting projects, well at least for a little while. The drama makes us all laugh (during the fiasco made me want to cry) so I thought I would share it with you to get a good laugh as well.

We started off early one morning sanding the table down. That took a few hours but we got to use muscles we didn't even know we had to so that fine. That night we put on the first coat of paint. We decided to use a roller to do the top of the table and that worked out great. We figured we should do a second coat the next day and then do some kind of varnish. The next night I completed the second coat and right when I was done with the last little part I looked down on the whole top of the table and saw little fuzz from the roller throughout all the paint!!! I was in denial that it was really happening but hurried and got my mom and Andrew. They rushed to get wet towels and wipe off everything we had worked on so far. I stood there covered in sweat and paint thinking this is not happening and then why do I talk myself into these kind of things??? So after they wiped everything up we were all exhausted sitting on the couch them laughing about it all and me trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. Andrew says, "I can't believe the roller did that! Where did you get that roller?" Then it hit my mom and I that we had made a very poor choice on where to find a decent roller and said softly together, "The Dollar Tree." He then was in shock and could totally understand why it fell apart in the second coat which gave us all another good laugh. Side note**never buy a roller at the Dollar Tree! So then the next morning with renewed energy and a good night's rest we started sanding again. This time we didn't have to sand as hard so that was good. I did another coat of paint and then we figured we would wait until late that night to do the varnish. We go to the good people at Lowe's and get advice on what varnish and brush to get. They recommend one and then tell us we can do it with a roller. So late that night, already exhausted from the early mornings and late night work for the past 2 days, I attempt to do the final step, the varnish. I paint the ends with a brush and it goes on fine, not as smooth as I anticipated but okay. Then I pull out the special roller we bought and proceed to do the top only to find that the roller makes it bubble all over! So I toss that aside and start using a brush to fix the problem but it is just not going on smooth. At this point I was want to throw this table away but know that it can be fixed so my mom helps me yet once again get wet towels and wipe off the varnish. At this point, I am just scared to touch the table. I feel like anything I do, no matter how hard I try to do it right will go wrong. So we decided I should just do one more coat of paint and be done with this table. I did that and the table project was complete, well at least on my end, everyone agreed I should not touch the table anymore! I just figured God was using this to humble me and if the table was not perfect that would be fine becuase it would be a daily reminder to me of how imperfect I am. So now we got our chairs to go with it and now that there have been a few days of rest I have grown to love our new table. I would advise all of you to never ask for my help to paint any kind of furniture:) Here are some pictures for you to see how it turned out.