Painting Furniture - A New Adventure

Mike and I found a super old table in the garage (it's probably an antique) and when Gene died, the son said it wasn't theirs so we could do what we wanted with it. Mike wanted to dump it, but I wanted to keep it, so we dusted it off and I've decided to try and bring it back to life with hopes that it can live on the deck of our new house. It is a funky old table. It has a leaf in the middle with a cool folding mechanism that stores the leaf under the table (I just googled it and it is called a butterfly leaf). The legs also separate, so the table can either be a little higher than coffee table height, or normal table height. A bit strange, I'm not sure why a table would be designed this way. It also has a decorative trim that looks burned into the wood. It is pretty variable in depth, so I'm going to fill it will wood filler to try and smooth it out around the edges.

I've been getting some inspiration and more importantly, information, on how to paint furniture from centsationalgirl's website. She does some wonderous things to old, beat up furniture. I doubt my first attempt will be as fantastic as anything she has done, but hopefully it'll be good enough to enjoy a card game and a glass of wine around.

Here are some before pictures of the table (I remembered to take them right before I was about to start sanding).

Table top with leaf:

Table leg base:

Decorative trim burned into the wood:

The folding mechanism for the leaf:

I've taken the table mostly apart, sanded it, filled in scratches and the trim with wood filler and primed the base.  I hope to make some more progress this weekend, so check back for more pictures soon!