Down the hill, off the ramp, and tabletop over the burnt car.

I’m in the process of staining a wooden tabletop for the dinning room. The table started out as “patio furniture,” meaning the original tabletop surface is this black rot-iron mesh with a hole in the middle for an umbrella.

I’d bought the thing for somewhere around $90 at Home Depot thinking it was cool looking. Upon use it was discovered that things tended to fall through the mesh and onto the floor. It just wasn’t all that practical from a dinner table standpoint. And about two weeks after I bought the damn thing I got to wishing that I’d just gone to K-Mart and bought a standard el-cheapo wooden rectangle.

Leif and I had been toying with a bunch of ideas to solve the problem of chipotle sauce falling through the table and onto our toes. Tuesday afternoon I was walking around Lowes with Kevin, and I spotted it, a 48’’ wooden circle (the same exact diameter of the “patio furniture” table), about an inch think, and only $27.

I spent a good part of today sanding and staining the new tabletop. I’m using a deep mahogany red polyurethane stainer; so far it looks boss.

The first coat went on really well. I decided to go for a second coat after it was dry just to make sure the wood was sealed all the way as exposure to spilled liquids would no doubt pose a threat to the longevity of the tabletop. The second coating didn’t go as well as the first, and the finish after everything was dry is not as smooth as I’d like it to be. I’m going to try sanding it a little with some 1000 grit I have laying around, if anything interesting happens I’ll post up more about what ever it is that happens. Pictures maybe latter to.