This post is sponsored by Minwax.

Note: For those that are following our renovation closely, know that this was written and scheduled before we started demo…and even painted. Wow! 

Maybe you remember and are hearing this for the 25th time or maybe you aren’t aware, but we sold 99.9% of our furnishings with our last house and have been living blissfully (and echo-y) with less since moving in at the beginning of June. For the most part it has actually been great and my only regret when staring at the tower of boxes filled with…..what? like what is in those boxes?!…is we didn’t have time to have a big garage sale before we left and purge even more.

But on the other hand of that is feeling settled and at home for me does involve a place to prop up my feet. Sinking into a couch and placing my drink on a coffee table while I chat with family and friends at the end of a long day–I was missing that. We didn’t want to buy living room furniture until we got the renovations underway (starting any minute!) but I still wanted to create a living room setting, even temporarily, so when we have people over, they can sense our warmth and feel good in our home.

We’re using Jordan’s couch from Article, and I brought this lamp with us but it was feeling super bare.  Out in the garage, I found an outdoor coffee table we got years ago but it LOOKED like an outdoor table to me. The raw teak wood and black legs combination just felt a little out of place. We set out to give it a makeover in an hour!

Since the legs are so interesting, I wanted to keep it simple. Black on black. But before you reach for black paint–BLACK STAIN ADDS SO MUCH MORE INTEREST when you have a really beautiful wood. It allows the wood to breath and the grain to come through and even a lot of the warmth of the wood shines through in the end result. In summary, black stain is tres chic.

Since this was an outdoor table, it was treated with a finish to allow it to be outdoors so before staining, we sanded it down really well and wiped off the dust.

For this table, we decided to use Minwax’s True Black stain is the little black dress of stain. It’s classic. It’s neutral (not too cool or warm) and it really enhances the wood and creates so much depth.

Going with the grain, we applied the stain with a foam brush and wiped it off after about 5 minutes.

Repeat, repeat until the table is finished! Because stain is meant for layering, we saved the sides for after. A few years ago, in a staining project we did the sides first and some got on the top and when you layer on the top, it can look darker in those areas. So we’re always careful to do the most seen side first–the top in this case–and allow any layering that’s going to happen to be on secondary planes.

You can see below what one coat looks like. We decided to do one more coat for just a little more depth.

And then finish with a 3 coats of Polycrylic. This is our favorite water based protective finish! It dries so fast, isn’t stinky and cleans up easily. Drooling over that wood grain peeking through.

Here’s the finished top! Isn’t it the most beautiful moody table now? That’s the magic of stain. You still get the beauty and depth of wood, even in a black.

rug | sofa | coffee table | rattan tray | greenery | black stain | jeans

Why I really had to have a coffee table? I just needed to get my styling muscles moving. (jokes!) It feels good to have a surface to anchor our temporary living room and giving this table a second life as equally as rewarding.