Ikea Dining Table Makeover

This post has been a lot time coming. I started this project back in August and this is about as simple and easy as a project gets, but one thing led to another and I ended up doing each step about every other week and then didn't want to showcase the final product with moving boxes in the background in a dark basement apartment.

Just about every poor, newly married couple I know has this dining set from Ikea. When Eric and I got married we found this set on KSL for $40. For being poor it was a great little table, but one thing I never liked about it was that there was never enough room for more then 4 people and no extra for the food once you get all the plates on it. With a growing family and our love to entertain I wanted something bigger. After looking at new dining sets I came to terms with it not being in our budget to get a new one so I decided to give our current table a makeover as well as make it bigger.

My inspiration came from all the farmhouse tables floating around pinterest and many DIY blogs. I figured this would also be a great way to make my table larger in width and length.

The first step was to take off the table top by just unscrewing it from underneath. Then I lightly sanded the base of the table and painted it white. I did the same with the 4 chairs, expect I used a spray primer and paint.

For the table top I used 2x6's cut down to my desired length. I used six of those on the table going across. (If anyone wants actually measurements I'd be happy to give it you.) For the wood planks I first sanded them down and rounded the edges of each. Then I primed them with a dark walnut stain. After the stain was dry I lightly sanded the wood planks again on the edges to give a distressed look. This is where I really started liking the result! Lastly, I did 3 coats of Minwax Polycrylic (water-based) to protect the wood from spills and general wear.

To assemble the wood planks I used my handy-dandy husband (thanks hun!) to screw them all together with 1x3s and then attached the whole thing to the table.

There is SO much more room on the table now and room for two chair at the end making it a table for 6 people! I got these upholstered end chairs from Target to finish it off.

The updated dining set looks great in our new dining room!

Linked to:
http://www.blackberryvine.blogspot.com/2013/12/tuesday-to-do-141.html
http://www.ourtableforseven.com/2013/12/share-your-stuff-tuesdays-25.html#more
http://www.create-with-joy.com/2013/12/inspire-me-monday-week-101.html
http://thediydreamer.com/from-dream-to-reality/97-party-time/