My Tribute to Dave Matthews.

My kitchen table has been through a lot. So much so that I roped Boy Toy into helping me redo the surface of it. If you want to do something like this to a table, night stand really anything that can be sanded and stained here’s a short list of what you’ll need:

• Tape measure
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Frog tape or Blue Painter’s Tape.
• Stain (color of your choice)
• Sponge paintbrushes.
• Polyurethane
• a Boy Toy (don’t have one? I guess you could do this without one )

Start by sanding down your surface until you’ve taken off the layers of polyurethane.

Wipe off all the sandy bits with a wet cloth and let dry a few minutes.

Now comes a little bit of math. I wanted words on my table. Yes words. Subway art is becoming way popular and though I’m not a fun of that style I do like the idea of having words, quotes, sayings on things.

Measure your table.

Decide how big you want your letters to be and decide how much space you want between each letter and the lines.

My letters were 6 1/2’’ tall x 3’’ wide. Boy Toy and I spaced the lines two inches apart and left 1/2’’ between each letter.

Take a piece of paper, write out the words/quote you want to have on your table on your paper exactly HOW you want them to be. Count your lines and multiply that by the height of your letters. (Man do I hate math)

My equation was 6 1/2’’ x 5’’ =32 1/2’’. So 32 1/2’’ is the total height of all words.

Count the spaces between your lines and multiply that by the size of your spaces.  We had 4 lines and wanted 2’’ spaces between each line. So our equation was 4x2=8. (I still really hate math!)

Add these numbers together and subtract it from the length of our surface. 46-40 1/2 = 5 1/2’’.

Divide that by 2 to finally get how far you need to space your letters from the top of your surface.5 1/2 /2= 2 3/4’’.

NOW, measure the width of your surface, divide that by 2 and draw a line down the center of your surface.

The picture above shows all the measurements I just went over with you drawn out. The line to the right of the picture is the top line where my first row of words will start with a line drawn beneath it for where the bottom of the words will end. 

The line down the middle is where you'll do the following: You’re finally ready to center your words by finding the middle of each word. Start with that letter on the center line and work out from there.

Boy Toy drew in the letters while I followed behind with Frog Tape and taped it off. (I hate math but LOVE frog tape)

First word finished!

ALL the words are written in and taped off, ready for stain. It doesn’t hurt to really press and rub down over the edges of the Frog Tape to make sure you have a good seal.

I applied 3 coats of stain over the next day just to make sure everything was covered and had a good edge to the words. (Make sure you follow the direction on the stain you pick up, if it says to sand in between layers make sure you do for a better look overall)

Once the last coat is on BUT NOT completely dry gently and slowly pull off the Frog Tape. There are bound to be a few bleeds just take a Q-tip wet or dry and rub the bleeds away gently.
Before:

After:

Erase all of your pencil marks and bleeds.

Now,the final step…Polyurethane. I put on 5 coats but it’s really up to you how many coasts you feel comfortable with or how much shine you want your table to have.

Here’s a picture of my table with only one coat. It covered well but not enough.

This is the first type of project I’ve done like this so if my directions aren’t clear (which I bet they aren’t) email me (jessicamg@gmail.com) and I can, hopefully, help clarify or explain your specific question.
~Jess