Sanding and Painting Furniture: Updating the Look of our Nook!

Well Sunday was not a day of rest for me and I can't believe I started this, but I figured what the heck!  Alex was busy with the bathroom redo still (beadboard today, and it wasn't easy), and I wanted to save my chair covers for weeknights.  So, I decided to tackle something I have been thinking about for a while now... sanding and painting the table and stools in the nook!  This is extra fun for me because I am taking it on all by myself, so I hope I impress the hubby!

These are the black table and stools that just needed to go (I have more details about this table in our kitchen nook blog, it has already undergone a redo on it's own). 

The rest of our kitchen has white cabinets, so to give the whole kitchen (and nook) a more cohesive feel we wanted to paint the table and stools white.

Thankfully it was a nice fall day, so I got my protective (and cute) gloves on and got to work! I grabbed my trusty Ryobi Cat Sander and started sanding.  The surfaces all needed to be stripped of the black paint and rough sanded in order for the white paint to adhere to the surface.  I have seen similar projects in a few other blogs but I hadn't tried sanding furniture yet, so today was quite the adventure.  Sanding all 3 stools took close to an hour, with about 15-20 minutes spent on each stool.  It really wasn't my favorite project, and it was so loud!  I am glad my neighbors didn't want to kill me today!

The table was a lot harder, it's black finish was just impossible to get off, and the Cat Sander couldn't hang.  So I had to bust out the big guns for this job!  I grabbed Alex's Black and Decker Dragster Belt Sander.  I must say, using the Dragster was a lot more fun than the Cat Sander, I felt so powerful!  Except of course for the first moment I turned it on and laid it on the table... it was like one of those scenes from Home Improvement when Tim Allen would use a tool and it would zip forward out of control and pull him with it (28 second mark).  After that trial run, I got the hang of it (and I was glad Alex didn't see that, otherwise he would have taken it away from me). Ha!

The table took me about 30-40 minutes to sand (I think).  It went a lot faster using the fancy sander.  So here's the sanded table (I will still need to do some hand sanding where I couldn't get the belt sander to reach).

Here are the stools...

Aren't they just SCREAMING for white paint?!?!  I hope to get started painting them this week. I still need to make my chair covers as well, but now that the table is a mess and the space is unavailable, I think it takes top priority. Ooooo, two projects for me in one week, exciting!