Newly-Awesome-Stenciled-DIY Kitchen Table

So, Utah was great! Other than the allergies I had to battle the whole time (stupid Cottonwood trees) it was fantastic :D I didn't get to hit up all the foodie places I wanted to... lucky for me we're going back to Utah in only two short weeks for a wedding! Woot woot! Par-tay!

I had fun with friends and a super great time hanging out with my mom and unpacking her house and all our family memories. We had our big garage sale and sold everything she or I couldn't take. It was hard to let go of some of it, but I'm so excited for her and the adventures she will have in Germany!

Speaking of all the cool things I got to take. I got my old yearbooks, a rocking chair my mom got when she had me, and an old kitchen table that has been in our family for who knows how long. My earliest memory of this table, is sitting on it and carving pumpkins when I'm about five I think. I was so excited to get the table because I had just seen this blog: click here!

I knew what I had to do.

I looked and deliberated over stencils for a whole week and finally found one on Etsy that Ray and I both loved, and it was only $20 compared to most other stencils at around $50! So I scooped it up. Then I asked my father in law to come over and help me sand the table down with his cool power sanding tools. Plus he has endless knowledge on woodwork, I was so glad he was here to help! Here are some pictures of the transformation.

I almost missed the "before" picture, but I quickly stopped my sanding and hunted down my camera successfully!

Once it was finally sanded and smoothed to perfection, we were able to start stenciling! I'm lucky my FIL was there, I was a little overzealous on painting the stencil- he had to keep telling me to stop so I didn't push the paint through and make the pattern bleed around the edges.

Here it is post-stencil and pre-stain...

And here is the finished product! I love it :) I'm super pleased with how it turned out. Now all we need to do is find some chairs to go with the table so we can stop sitting in our newly acquired campfire chairs. They're so low when I sit at the table my chin nearly hits the table top each time I chew. Let the garage sale hunting commence!

P.S. In case you noticed, or didn't for that matter: Yes, I did sand this table in my apartment. Probably not my brightest idea as I will be vacuuming and wiping dust off of everything in my apartment for who knows how long. But- there was no outlet outside our apartment, I don't own an extension cord, and we were too excited to get started to go buy one. At the end of the day based on the results, I regret nothing :)