Amidala: i'm in love with a stripper.

a paint stripper, that is.

maybe i should start at the beginning. about a year ago, i found a piece of furniture at a yardsale for $35 that i just couldn't pass up. i first described it to my mom as "a table with 4 legs." Mark prefers to call it the credenza, but i am of the opinion that since i am under the age of 50, i am too young to own something called a credenza, so i refer to it as the not-a-credenza. anywho, it was in need of some love, and i was in need of some furniture for my new house. it was a match made in heaven.

i decided that refinishing it was going to be my winter project. and then winter came and went and i decided that maybe it could be a spring project. and then spring went by so fast that it turned into a summer project.

so in July, in the midst of our massive drywall extravaganza, i finally made time to start it. after going over the entire thing once with a 60 grit sandpaper, i not only discovered how many layers of paint were on this thing, (at LEAST 4 in colors including but not limited to white, gray, tan, green, orange, teal, and red) but also that sanding them all off was going to take a ton of time and sandpaper. i mean, all those curvy edges and the turned legs look really pretty, but i was not looking forward to trying to sand four layers of paint off of them by hand.

it wasn't pretty. so it sat again for a few more months until last weekend, when in the middle of a frustrated crying sanding-induced hissy fit, the hubs suggested trying out the paint stripper that we had used to get rid of the stray paint splatters on the fireplace brick. and i have to say that for as messy as it was, (the majority of the paint came off with the color and consistency of snot), and as much as i didnt like having to wait 15 minutes between each application and removal, it was way faster and way less of a pain that trying to sand it all.

overall, it took a few hours of paint stripping last sunday and this past saturday, and then a relatively quick once over with 220 grit sandpaper, and this beauty is ready for paint! (i know it still doesn't look extremely fantastic, but trust me its a huge improvement)

i bought the paint yesterday, along with all new hardware, and i am excited to get painting and get this thing back into usuable form. our dining room table has been suffering as the only horizontal surface on which we can dump stuff when we come in the house, which means we have been eating a lot of meals off our laps on the couch, so it will be nice to have the not-a-credenza back in action.

**UPDATED**
since you all (and by you all i mean you, Mom) asked so nicely, here's the color: it's called Blue Agave (by Behr) and i think it's going to be gorgeous, don't you think?