Let's feast.

My dad has kindly offered to build us a table and bench with lumber from my Grandpa's house - it's truly gorgeous stuff, so I'm really pumped. However, we didn't want to rush him - after all, he is leaving for Alaska this week and when he comes back, he'll go right back to teaching. So, we decided to take on a little DIY project - buy something cheap and fix it up as an interim table for the next year. I must say, it turned out to be an awesome interim table! One that is ready for a little dinner party, wouldn't you agree?

First, we picked up this solid wood table at Goodwill for $13.

We took hours to sand and sand, then sand again.

After we thought we sanded enough, we picked up some stain and varnish for about $12.

Turns out, on the very edge of the table, we didn't sand the varnish off enough and the stain didn't soak in enough. Since we're both perfectionists, we sanded it all down AGAIN and reapplied the stain. Then applied three coats of varnish. (We used satin finish, so it's not too glossy.) As for the legs, we tried sanding them all, but it was going to take ridiculously long because they had a thick coat of white paint on them - so instead of sanding and staining, we painted them a dark brown to match the stain, which was about $10 with a lot to spare.

With a little elbow grease, look at how beautiful the end product looks!

Don't you think it looks so good in our dining room?! All for the bargain price of $35. Not too shabby. We might look for a few additional cheap chairs, but I do like it with my chairs from my two-seat dining table from my apartment.

P.S. This is the before shot of our living room - as staged by the real estate agent. Don't you love the green color we chose? It's even prettier in person, in my opinion :)