King Me

 I guess I could have called this post "Checkmate" instead of "King Me", but I never really learned chess, checkers was more my game.  I found this little table last year at a garage sale for $2.00.  I mean who can pass that up!  It had one broken leg, but nothing my hubby couldn't fix.  It was also missing the inserted top piece, someone had thrown a peel and stick vinyl square in there, thank goodness not stuck yet.  Originally I wanted to paint this yellow and transfer The Graphic Fairy French Bee in the center.  I still think that would have been cute, but I decided to go natural instead. 

I didn't mean for this to be my husbands project, but that is how it pretty much turned out.  First like I said he re-glued the broken leg, then he cut out the top from some veneered plywood.  Then I had the bright idea of a stained checkerboard top.  How hard could that be right?   First we stained the veneer with honey oak, the he taped it and stained it with ebony.  Not too bad, a few runs under the tape but not bad.  Then he went to put on some wipe on poly, and it wiped off the dark stain ):  So next he used a ruler and pencil and marked all of the squares, and with a brush, hand stained each square.  It sat for a week, but when he went to poly it again, most of the stain came off again!  I thought it made it look old and rustic so we left it.  Plus this is for resale and I am selling it really cheap, so I didn't want to put anymore time into it.  Next I got the easy part.  I just used Howard's Restore a Finish in red mahogany, and then waxed it.  It's not my best piece, but maybe someone will have fun playing checkers, or maybe even learn chess on it.

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