After finally getting the courage to sand down our orange-y maple tabletop in the summer, I realized it wasn’t quite right.
The pale wood showed every streak of marker (thanks, kids) and it started feeling a little . . . undone.
When I really thought about it, I knew I wanted a planked barn-board table. So what was the easiest, least expensive way to get the look of barn boards? Faking it.
It was time to implement Plan B: reversing the two-tone look by painting the base of the table (and chairs) white, and darkening the tabletop. Not just darkening it with stain, though — burning it.
It took a couple of hours to burn all of the lines and then I started burning random marks to distress the wood — little dents, tiny holes, scrapes and scars. I darkened the burn between some of the planks to make the cracks wider and ‘dirtier,’ and traced some of the grain patterns to highlight them. Then I grabbed a fork and a hammer and started banging it up in different ways.
SO. MUCH. FUN.
Next it was time to stain …
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