Living Unbound: Painting and Distressing a Wood Table

We've been in the market for a kitchen table for quite some time, so I was excited when my husband brought home this old solid wood table from work last week. Thanks to Adam's generous boss, our price was free! With a little bit of teamwork and about six bucks for paint, this is what it looks like now:

Since a lot of our furniture and cabinetry is in the brown family, we decided we needed a little pop of color. My color inspiration was this vase that I picked up years ago at World Market:

I took it to Lowe's and found a perfect match! I also picked up some sponge sanders - both fine and medium grade.

We started by sanding the table with the medium sponge. Then we applied two coats of paint using rollers and foam brushes.

Next came the fun part. Honestly, I was really nervous to start. But everyone says that you really can't mess up a distressing job...which I found out is very true. You actually WANT to mess it up! Which completely goes against my nature. And most definitely against my husband's nature. :) So we had to laugh as we were making this "mess" of our beautiful painting job.

To distress, we used a fine sponge sander. At first we distressed the whole top area, but I decided it was too drastic for the look I was going for, but it was no problem because we simply painted back over it. For a more natural look, we just distressed the edges, sides, and legs. Here are some close-ups:

It took some more elbow grease than I expected, but all in all, I was surprised at how quick and easy this look was to achieve.

Since we have a glass top for the table we decided not to use a sealer. Plus, I like the natural, satin finish of the paint, and I didn't want to gloss it up at all.

We are very pleased with the result and will probably be doing more work like this in the future!