Coffee Table

Happy Monday!

I bought this great coffee table off craigslist a while back. I loved the piece with all the drawers and the little compartment along the back. It was fairly beat up, though, and 'poopy brown' is not my favorite color.

Before

After

I took off all the hardware and then sanded the dickens out of this thing. Then, applied several coats of primer on the bottom of it. Then, several coats of paint (Olympic "Heirloom Lace"). I did a little sanding around all the edges and then brushed on and wiped off the stain to rustify it a bit. Then, several coats of polycrylic. (LOTS of coats on this thing!)

On the top I sanded it down and stained it with MinWax "Dark Walnut". And then several coats of polycrylic. I put all the hardware back on and replaced a few knobs on the drawers (goodbye Lions head knobs).


There was another fix I had to make. One of the top corners looked like this...

Broken. I didn't really have a clue how to fix this. I thought about taking that piece to my brother (I believe he's known around here as "The Joe"), but I wasn't going to make it down there anytime soon. So, my hubby was cruising the Internet one day and found this stuff that was a daily special on ebay....


I decided to give it a try. Basically, you take a piece of this putty and 'activate' it by pushing it in your fingers a while. Then, you just mold it onto whatever you want, in whatever shape you want. In about a half our it is hard as rock and you can sand it, paint it, whatever. Here's the result on the corner...

I know, not perfect, but I'd say better than no corner at all. It was pretty cool stuff and I think I could make it look even better now that I've used it once.

And there you have it. What are you working on this week?

PS: If you care about my top coat experience, read on....

I ended up using Minwax polycrylic for the top coat. I saw that they had a spray version and after ALL the coats of paint, I couldn't pass up the opportunity for some beloved spray. The can let me do 2-3 coats on the entire table. I thought it looked great...no streaks, no brush strokes, no drips. Great! But, then I was putting a drawer back in and hit it on the piece just above it and a little circle of paint chipped off. AHHH! I was concerned about this and ended up brushing on (yes, MORE brushing) 2 coats (MORE coats) of polycrylic after fixing the chipped spot. Was the spray not good enough? Did I just not spray evenly enough and missed that little skinny piece of wood? Would the same thing have happened (will happen?) with the brush on? Time will tell, I guess.

****You all liked this table so much (thanks!), that I decided to join in to Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party and share it with the peeps over there. Have you ever been to TDC? She's got a million great DIY ideas!****