Dining Table, Finale

It is finally time to complete the table!

I completed the legs and the top, and now it is time to finish them both.  I wanted to do my best to make the 2 types of oak (red and white) appear to be similar.  There is no better way to do this than to make the finish very dark. 

My friend Josh, over at boundaries in time has done a very nice finish on his dining table that consisted of: Dye, Shellac, Stain, Topcoat. I decided to do the same, but where he thinned out his dye and I will not thin to get a darker color. I went with:

-General Finishes Medium Brown Water Based Dye stain

-Zinnser clear Shellac

-General Finishes Brown Mahogany Wood Stain

-50/25/25 Mineral Spirits + Gloss Polyurethane + Satin Polyurethane (I didn’t have any semi-gloss)

I don’t have any ‘during’ pictures, as I was too mad with how it was turning out. At one point, just after finishing the dye step, I was about to resand the entire top because you could see every brush mark and overlap. but as I added layers, everything evened out and looked better and better.  At the end, it was by far the best finishing job I had done.

Here is the before: 

And here is how it looked after all was said and done.

Assembled!

We repaired and reupholstered some antique chairs to go with the table.  The existing finish on the chairs is nearly and exact match.

Finally complete, It was in the dining room and fully complete for about 1 month.  then it was packed and moved, with us, to Colorado!

And, to think, it all came from this...