A Mid-Century modern dinning set reborn

I have been desperate for a new dining table which is larger than one we have. Well, it doesn't have to be literally "new". We wanted something fits well in our Mid-Century built house. There is nothing in our favorite style in furniture stores in town. Vintage tables are too expensive for our budget. So I have waited patiently for months and months. Then, finally! I found it. It was waiting for me at a yard sale on the way to my doctors office.

At a glance, I found that this dinning set is ideal for our dining room. The style is very Mid-Century, and it even looked like some kinds of Danish modern design (Actually it wasn't Danish, but was surely a Mid-Century product). When I sew that the price at the yard sale was $50. I promptly called my husband Tim and asked him to stop by the sale on the way home from work. When we were back at the sale, Tim asked discount (of course!) and it went down to a half price!!

We found out that the dinning set is a product of Kroehler. Kroehler was a furniture maker in Chicago from early 20th century to 70's. They were the second largest furniture seller in the US. I don't know about them so much, but it seems they produced a lot of cool furniture.

Anyway, the surface of the table was so ugly. It has gotten lots of paint spots and sticky stains from a old vinyl table cloth. But we were sure that it will be beautiful after elaborate sanding.

We worked very hard together sanding the surface for a couple hours. The stain from a table cloth was pretty tough to get lid of.

Finished sanding! Hope you can see the beautiful wood grain!

After that we put an organic oil stain. One coat a day. We repeated that five times. Which means it took five days to finish. Then it looks like this! Shiny, haah? I am so so happy with the result of our patience.

This is the finished product. The table has three leaves.  So when it gets expanded ten people easily can fit in. How wonderful it is! The one we used to have could barely hold six people. Now I can invite friends over to tea or dinner without worrying about the seating arrangement.

We are using the table like this with six seating. It feels much more spacious on the table than before. For me, our dinning table is not only for having meals. On the table, I do embroidery, knit, crochet, draw designs and so on. Nina does her homework there, Tim and I sometimes work on PC on the dinning table as well. So this place is pretty much important for me and I am so happy that now I have an ideal table and it is beautifully finished by US!

Oooops! There are five chairs left still needing help! Well, they are still on work in progress. I detached seats and cleaned wood. I have been looking for a good fabric to re-upholster these. But there's no luck so far.

When this project is finished, I will share it with you here. Stay tuned, and I hope you all have a great weekend! Thank you for reading.