the drop leaf table.

Published on by Quandie

I’ve mentioned this table in a couple of posts now.  I picked it up at a garage sale on my lunch hour.  Well, technically I purchased it on my lunch hour, but sent Mr. Q to pick it up later in the truck.

farm table 1 before

It was a little wonky when I got it.  Two of the legs were wobbly, plus the top of the table had a big gap in the center.  I suspect it used to have some leaves for making it bigger, but those were long gone.  So Ken took it over to his workshop to shore it up.  He is a fan of taking a piece completely apart and then putting it back together the ‘right’ way.  With glue and pegs.  And that is what happened with this piece.  He took it all apart and then put it back together again.  It couldn’t be sturdier now.

I already posted about having Ken permanently remove the leaves, which became Farmer’s Market signs.

drop leaf green

My original plan for the table was to paint just the base and leave the top as is.  I thought the finish looked fairly good.  Rustic and beat up, but in a good way.

So, I painted a base coat of MMS milk paint in Boxwood, then added two coats of Shutter Grey on top of that.  I should mention at this point that my preferred method of painting table bases is to flip the table upside down on some horses and paint it that way.  When I had the painting all done and I flipped the table back over … well … I just wasn’t loving the way the original finish on the top worked with the paint.  It was too orange-y and too shiny.  That meant I had to strip the top after all.  So I carefully stripped it with some citrus stripper.  Once stripped, I sanded it down and add a coat of clear wax followed by a coat of MMS white wax.

table close up

I really prefer the lighter colored top with the Shutter Grey on the base.

drop leaf table 2

I also think the way the table is put together with mismatched grain on each plank of wood is very charming.  There are still a few dings and gouges that show the age of this piece, and the original casters are still in place.  They work quite well too.

table top

This is another piece that would work great as a desk, or even as a large bedside table

drop leaf table 1

How about it?  Any of you in need of a desk?  Or a table?  This one is available.

20 thoughts on “the drop leaf table.”

    1. Well, in my experience, if a piece is going to chip naturally it is going to chip all the way down to the original finish. So, the base coat color chips along with the top coat color. This makes sense when you think about the fact that chipping occurs when the original finish resists the paint (so it resists all of the paint color layers). When I want a base coat color to show I usually use a forced method of resisting just the top color. In this case, I added a little hemp oil over the Boxwood in some spots so that the Shutter Grey wouldn’t stick in those spots. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any good close up pics of this piece, but if I had you’d see that in some spots I have chipping that occurred naturally and the original wood finish shows through, and then I also have spots where I used hemp oil and just the Shutter Grey chipped away leaving the Boxwood. I hope all of that made sense!

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      2. It’s a Miss Mustard Seed product. You can get it anywhere that sells the Miss Mustard Seed milk paint. However, you can also usually get it at health food stores too. It is a food safe product. In other words, you could eat it (and this is also why it’s safe to use to refresh your cutting boards). Funny enough, Mr. Q is big on juicing and he often adds hemp oil to his smoothies. I don’t let him use mine though! He buys his through Amazon I think. But really, it’s the same stuff. You can read more about this product here. Also, as an FYI, I find the price of the MMS brand to be comparable to the health food store prices.

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    1. I had one of those ‘eureka!’ moments last winter when I brought home a similar table with leaves that were really wonky so I took them off. You can read about that one here. Once I did that I realized that a lot of the farmhouse style tables that I was admiring on pinterest looked like similar tables without their leaves. Since then I’ve done a couple more, including the table I use as a desk in my own Q Branch.

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    1. Thanks Darrielle! Yeah, I’m glad I went ahead and stripped the top after all. You really couldn’t see the grain very well with the orange-y stain that was on there.

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  5. Nothing less than I would expect from the “amazing Quandie”. Love your blog because you rescue these forlorn pieces and give them a new provenance. In its new condition I imagine an entirely different back story the the first incarnation. I can also envision it as a foyer table drop mail and keys when walking thru the door perfect for a farmhouse.

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    1. Awesome idea Victoria. And if one used it in the foyer, they could stack some suitcases under it for additional storage, or use some old wooden crates as shoe racks.

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    1. Thanks Cynthia! I don’t think it’s the green undercoat, the color really is quite blue. If you go to pinterest and looks for some more samples of pieces painted in Shutter Gray, they usually look pale blue.

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  8. GREAT MINDS! I recently did the exact same thing with a drop leaf table! Suddenly, it was a beautiful piece, no cumbersome dropped leaf on either side! I love how the left-overs became signs!

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  9. Pingback: the green alligator farmhouse table. – q is for quandie

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