A little over 3.5 years ago, I bought a table and chairs set off of Ebay (I searched locally, by zip code).
I scored this table and chairs for $5 total. Not kidding, an actual five dollars!
It’s hard to tell from this picture, but the table was heavily scratched. By the time we got through moving it, there were also a few additional marks on the top.

This chair shows not only how much lighter and cherry-toned the table used to be, but also how scratched. The whole top of the table looked like that edge right there.
My eventual plan (by the Fall) is to get a table with removable leaves so that we can seat more than 4 people (wouldn’t THAT be nice!). But our “moving in” budget is getting tighter and tighter, as there are lots of cosmetic changes I’d like to make that would be easier to do right away before moving in. In other words, a new table is just not on the list of priorities right now.
So…with Jesse’s help, we refinished it over the course of 3 days! Granted, the project definitely did not have to take this long, we just spread it out and did it a teeny bit at a time.
Friday, Jesse sanded it down. Saturday, we took turns applying the Minwax glaze that Tess and I had picked out the night before at Home Depot (I was their nightly 9:30pm window shopper, 3 nights total this week!). I was pretty impressed with myself– I wanted it to match our TV stand, and even though I didn’t have a picture with me, I still managed to pick out the closest match possible!
Just this afternoon, we applied the protective top coat. And look how beautifully it turned out!
The chairs are for another time/place, since I plan on replacing them anyways in a month or two (any Pinterest buddies out there know that I have PLANS!). But for now, I’m just happy that we have a pretty table 🙂