Some rooms are so generous in scale that ordinary furniture simply disappears into them. That was the challenge facing us in Cobham, where a very large dining room needed a table with enough presence to hold its own. The client already had the table. What it needed was the colour. And so, a black painted dining table was the one and only item on the menu.
Black Painted Dining Table Has Size on its Side
The Piece
This was a solid wood dining table of fairly recent manufacture, and there was nothing wrong with it structurally. It was well made and built to last. But it came in a plain, unremarkable, but tough, brown varnish, and against the scale and style of its new surroundings, it simply didn't suit.
What it lacked in grace, though, it more than made up for in size. We've painted many dining room tables before. However, this is a genuinely huge table, built in two sections — a substantial lower pedestal and a separate top dining surface — and not many tables are built on this scale. It's the sort of piece that arrives in a van in two pieces and still needs two people to carry each half.
The Process: Step by Step
Step 1: Cleaning and sanding
We began, as always, with a thorough clean before sanding back the surfaces to key the wood ready for priming. Splitting the table into its two natural sections — pedestal and top — made this stage manageable, though a piece this size is never an easy one to shift outside for sanding.
Step 2: Priming
With the wood prepared, we sealed it with Zinsser BIN, our go-to stain-blocking primer. It gives a flawless, stable base for everything that follows and stops any marks in the timber finding their way through the topcoat.
Step 3: Undercoat
Next came an undercoat to build body and even out the surface, so the final colour would sit smooth and true.
Step 4: The Colour
For the topcoat we chose a deep black eggshell from Dulux's Diamond range. It's a tough, hard-wearing finish — every bit as suited to a busy kitchen as a dining room — which matters on a table built for entertaining on this scale.
Step 5: Checking and finishing touches
A table this size is also awkward to manoeuvre when you're checking the finish and giving final approval, so this stage took a little more care and a little more patience than usual. Once we were satisfied, we removed the masking tape, gave the whole piece a final check with a fine brush, and we were done.
Painted Black and Ready for Delivery
The table proved hard work when we had to move it ready for sanding, but also to get it ready for its return to Cobham.
Ready for its delivery to Cobham, the black painted table really does look huge.
Black Dining Table is Back in Cobham Residence
Reassembled and back in its Cobham dining room, the table finally looks like it belongs. Set for dinner beneath a pair of warm brass pendant lights, the deep black surface holds the room together rather than fighting it. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors run the width of the far wall, the evening sky just visible behind them, and the black top throws back just enough gleam from the candlelight to feel properly formal.
Charcoal upholstered chairs are pulled in neatly around it, white place settings and delicate wine glasses laid out in rows, and a loose arrangement of autumnal red and orange stems sits at the centre, the one note of colour against all that black. Six places are laid, but there's easily room for more when the occasion calls for it. It's a big room, and now it has a table confident enough to fill it rather than sit lost in the middle of it.
Not many tables come through the workshop on this scale, and fewer still need to be reassembled quite so carefully once the paint is dry. If you've got a piece too large or too plain for the room it's ended up in, give us a call and we'll see what we can do.
Let's Get In Touch
Contact Details
When it takes sanding, painting, varnishing or waxing to get there, give us a call if you've got furniture that needs a transformation.
Phone Number
07351 101851
Email Address
furniture@shabby-chic-surrey.com