Do unto your dining table as you would have your dining table do unto you

You eat here. You talk here. You might have "school" here. Your kids draw here. You sew here, iron here (well, at least I did, until I made our living room the sewing room). You entertain here. You LIVE here. It's your dining table and it takes a lot of flack from you! And if you're blessed enough to have a real wood dining table, you better treat it right! Do unto your dining table as you would have your dining table do unto you!

It wasn't too long ago that our table was just plain jane wood. Then it got black legs, and a cool antique finish on it's surface. (Click here to see that transformation a little over a year ago).

Well, here we are a year later, and the awesome antiquing finish has become a little dull and our laziness of not using coasters ALL THE TIME has brought out the worst water rings in all of us. We LIVE at this table! It gets wiped with a ~~harsh~~ eco-friendly cleaner at least once a day! I'm not surprised that it is just tired and worn out.

Here it is "before" I attacked it with some light sanding and Miss Mustard Seed's Hemp Oil last weekend. See that bottom section with the light area (where I scrubbed too hard one day) and the water rings? Well, this is right where I photograph my Etsy products, and it was starting to show in my pics!!

Look at these actual shots I have up on Etsy… water rings! Random light spots! It's terrible!

Luckily I've been working with Miss Mustard Seed's Hemp Oil for a few projects now, and was confident it would give a little revival to this table.

I sanded a few problem areas and then I just "painted" on the hemp oil with a paint brush.

Ivy "helped" in her cowgirl hat, just before she and daddy headed out to an anti-GMO rally.

It looks really wet when you first put it on, but after 30 minutes, you wipe off the excess oil. Then you let it "dry" for 24 hours. You can do additional coats at that point, or you can leave it be.

I actually might add a coat of furniture wax to it for further durability, so the same thing doesn't happen in a year. As you can see on the bottom of the photo, those light areas are still there, because essentially, the antiquing wax was wiped off every time I scrubbed really hard. I should probably re-apply antiquing wax on those spots and then do the furniture wax over it. But other than that, I'm really happy with the new finish.