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Furniture DIYers come in please!
I haven't posted in D&R much, but I lurk a bit and am always impressed with your ideas and resourcefulness. 
Inspired by some of your projects, I'm itching to try my hand at refinishing/painting furniture pieces, but a little nervous I'll mess them up. I have a cheap little side piece I picked up for practice. I plan to use sanding to prep it, then will paint it a fun color for DD's room. It should be easy enough as it's small with very simple lines.
Next, I hope to move on to our family table and chairs (see pics below). They have more detailed features (banding, beading), especially around the legs. I've seen chemical products for stripping furniture and wonder if this may be better for this type of project since sanding the legs could take forever.
So, I guess my questions are: When do you use sanding vs. stripping agents?? If using a liquid product, which ones are recommended?
If I do ok with these 2 projects, I may move on to a cabinet set I'm eyeing online.
Re: Furniture DIYers come in please!
You are ambitious!
Both DH and I have experience sanding/stripping furniture. If you can follow it to completion it is a good feeling, but it is not an easy quick-step DIY project.
Your basic practice project for the child will be a million times easier than your table and chairs. And, since you are painting and not restaining it, it will hide any imperfections.
Regarding the process and materials...you should get an electric sander. It will save time and your hands from sanding by hand. Also, the stripping agents do work, but they are highly, HIGHLY irritating. You must be in well-ventilated areas and you must wear gloves. They burn skin.
Also, they aren't totally perfect. You'll find that they do remove stain and paint, but it becomes a gummy mess and still much effort must be put into sanding.
And, regarding sanding, if you research online, you have to use several types of sandpaper. You begin with very coarse ones and you progress to fine ones. Online sites can give you details about which ones to purchase.
For staining, you will do several coats and then a top coat.
DH did a dining room table, with one leaf, and six chairs. All the items had straight lines and no rounded edges (which are more difficult to reach with a sander and paper). It took him about 30 hours. And, that was just work time. That did not include the time he spent in the store and online doing research. Also, you need a clean, dust-free area to stain or you will have little white flakes in your coats and it will look horrible. You cannot stain it too hot or too cold of weather.
It might sound like I'm talking you out of this dining set project, but I think you should know before you dive in what it all requires. DH won't be doing any more furniture refinishing. He did a beautiful job, but it was not without some difficult points.
We bought that set on Craigslist for $200. Spent $73 to get it to our house. By the time he finished, we could have easily just bought a new set and saved all the time.
DH and I refinished a kitchen table and 2 chairs (similar to what you have pictured above) and also 6 additional dining chairs by sanding and painting.
We didn't use a stripping agent, it was just as easy to sand without the mess of the strippers and fumes. We sanded all areas that we could with the electric sander and went back over detailed areas by hand. We wiped everything down thoroughly with tack cloths and then painted.
The kitchen table and 2 chairs that we first did, I painted by hand... (yes, it was a pain)- but what a transformation! When we picked up the other 6 chairs to go with our dining table, we sanded and wiped them down the same way, but bought the correct spray paint, attached a different handle to the can (that you can buy to make it easier to spray for longer periods of time) and sprayed the other 6. (We were making everything black, so it was so much easier to spray them!) They came out so even and I love the updated look it gave everything.
PsIB
GL on your projects!
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