When we moved into our house our old tile top table had to go. We needed something bigger and more flexible to fit the space, however having a toddler I didn’t want to go and spend a ton of money on something that would likely be spilled, colored, and painted on. So I went to goodwill and found this beast of a table, slightly beaten up but it totally had extreme potential! Bonus it was 50% off of $35. So I drug the thing home, threw a table cloth on it and let it sit for way too long… Like a year too long. But while my husband was away on a trip I decided to tackle it as a surprise for him to come home to. My original plan was to sand down, gel stain and then poly the top I ended up looking at all the options in Home Depot and found Varathane Stain and Poly in Kona, bought it and hoped for the best, the instructions say it’s for use on real wood and to completely sand down the table first and all that jazz but I definitely didn’t have time for all that and my table was definitely not a real wood or even a veneer so I crossed my fingers, lightly sanded with a palm sander just enough to rough it up a little and got to work. I ended up doing 5 coats on it to get it to the color that I liked and I am so so so in love with how it turned out! I just used my trusty recipe for chalk paint (one cup latex paint, 1/3 cup water and 1/3 cup plaster of paris) on the bottom bits and voila. I still need to decide on how to distress the bottom or if I just want to clear wax it and what I want to do with the chairs. Needless to say I am in love with how this table turned out! I don’t think I’ll be putting a table cloth on it very often anymore! It’s been finished for a few weeks now and its still going strong but I will be sure to repost after a while about how the stain and poly held up on a laminate surface. =]