Dining Room And Storage Room Updates – Stripped Dining Table, A Dining Room Mockup, and Storage Room Progress

As I often do, I allowed myself to do what I really wanted to do yesterday rather than what I should have been doing. What I should have been doing is removing the last shelf from the wall, repairing the wall, and getting it ready for paint. But what I wanted to do was start stripping the dining table to see what was under that factory finish. So that’s what did. As a reminder, here’s what the table looked like when I bought it on Facebook Marketplace.

Not only was the finish wearing off, but it was also “decorated” with crayons and markers from the previous owner’s child.

I had high hopes that I would find beautiful, light wood under this finish.

Well, I was disappointed. After using stripper and scraping the finish off three times on half of the table, this is what I was left with.

If I were the type of person who love antique oak, this would actually be great. But I don’t. It went from brown to orange. Of course, this was before I did any sanding, and sanding always lightens up the wood and removed some of that orange. But on both sides, I had these areas that didn’t even look like wood on the edge. And again, this is after three rounds of using the stripper.

Here’s that same thing on the other side. So I don’t know if this whole area on both sides was formed with some sort of industrial wood filler, but it’s not paint because paint wouldn’t have withstood three rounds of stripper.

So I gathered all of the plans and ideas that I’ve deciding on in the last couple of weeks, headed to ChatGPT, and did a mockup of the room with the elements I’ve decided on, as well as those that I hadn’t quite decided on yet. And this is what I ended up with. And I’m just going to say up front that while there are some changes I’d make, I absolutely LOVE THIS this overall look.

I think the artwork needs to be a little different. The chandelier needs to be lower. And there are a few other tweaks I’d make to this look. But in general, I love this. So in the end, I’m about 98% sure that I’m going to go with a painted table. It’s what I’ve envisioned for weeks now, and I love the look so much.

But the subfloor is done! They got all of that old subfloor and concrete board out (and they even had a hard time with it, so that made me feel better about giving up 😀 ), and then they put down the new subfloor.

And as you can see, the scuttle hole to the crawl space had to go right inside the door. It is front and center, but that’s literally the only place it could go, so I’ll live with it.

I’m so excited to see the progress. And they’re back this morning to do the drywall, so things are moving along!