How to build a Coffee Table

After we got our "new to us" living room set, we started looking at coffee tables, but whoa were they pricy. So of course I looked on craigs list, but nothing was striking my fancy- well the antique factory carts but remember we are on a budget! So I found Ana Whites web site. Like I said before, I am in LOVE! We picked a coffee table we liked, and got to work.

First we measured the living room, and decided on a 3ft x 3.5 ft table. Then we headed out to the garage to take inventory of our lumber. Because we are using the lumber we salvaged from our garage demo, all we needed was a 4x4. (Turns out we actually HAD a 4x4, oh well save it for our next project) We headed to the local lumber yard, got our 4x4 and some poly for the top of the table. Our total was about $12.

After we gathered all the supplies we started to cut the lumber, remember to measure twice and cut once! ; )

We then laid out our table top to see what it looked like, and we were pleased with it so we continued on.

Ana’s instructions were really easy to follow, and the entire project went very smooth! Just remember to take the extra time to pre drill your holes, so you don’t split the wood.

Assemble the table, fill your holes and sand. Be sure to use a wood filler that can be painted or stained, depending on your plans.

We decided to paint the bottom of our table white, rather than stain it. I used Kilz primer, with a tad of Glidden Golden bronze added to it, for an antique white color. After it dried, I used my sanding block to distress the edges of the legs to give it an old and worn look. After I did that I used some stain we already had, on the distressed edges. It really made the wood pop with the white.

Last but not least is to seal and protect the top of the table! We used Min Wax Polycrylic. All you do is make sure your surface is clean and dry, then paint on. We ended up doing 3 coats on our table.  It was so easy to apply, a snap to clean up and it looks great!

This table took me one day to make and paint. I let it dry over night and finished it the next day after church. I am so happy with how it turned out!

Craigs List Living Room

Hi Y'all! After I re-did our dining room I really wanted to redo our living room. However, like most people, we are on a budget, so we couldn’t just run out and buy a new living room “get up” (as much as I would have liked to do that).  So I did what I always do, I looked on Craigs list. I love Craigs list by the way! It’s like the garage sale for our generation HA!  Because the room is still a work in progress, for right now I will just show you a few things I have been working on for the living room, mainly furniture, but as soon as it is all put together I will post pics of the entire room- promise!

To start off the living room make over I found two cute side tables on CL. I bought the pair for only $10. I popped them into my spray booth, mixed up a “custom” off white color (consisting of Kilz primer and small amount Glidden, Golden Bronze) , and then after they were dry I distressed them a bit.  They turned out great! I had intended to turn around and re-sell them, and even though I had an offer or two, they look so darn good in my living room I think I just might hang onto them for a while. Here they are…

My next obstacles were my sofa and love seat which we had previously bought from CL- told you I love CL! They were just not the right color or size for our living room. In fact the sleeper sofa was almost 9 ft long and over 3 ft deep, it was HUGE. Any ways, we sold that set and bought a more neutral color, smaller set. We now have a smaller sleeper sofa and a chair. My husband has claimed the chair, well when the cat “allows it” he he he.  

I have had my eye on one of those old factory cart coffee tables for a long time now, but honestly they are just WAY out of our price range. (big sad face) However I did find a few GREAT tutorials on how to build your own coffee table. I have just recently discovered Ana White, and of course am in LOVE! So I chose one of her plans for a knock off of a Pottery Barn coffee table.  You can find the instructions we (mostly) used here. Thanks Ana!

We recently tore down a small half wall in our garage, and my amazing  husband so lovingly saved all the UBER cool wood for me :D He even took the time to remove all the nails from each board, such a great man he is! So any ways, we ended up using the wood from the garage for the table top. This was not only a great way to reuse the wood (reduce reuse recycle right!) but we will forever have a piece of our first home… or the garage!

Here are the pictures of the coffee table…

Be sure to check out the post on how I made the coffee table, found here. (coming soon!)

Also be sure to check back SOON to see the finished living room!!! It's almost done, YAY!

Color Change

Hello every one!
I hope your holiday season went well! I know ours did! We have been so very busy, but I am back and ready to continue working on my blog.

Wondering what is new here in "the south"? Well the color of our dining room sure is!

We have been in our house for about 9 months now, and although I do like the traditional colors in our very traditional style home, I really love the look of the relaxed or shabby chic inspired style. The very bold colors in our house don't tie in real well with that style so I decided to paint our dining room. Why the dining room you ask, good question I am not really sure what inspired this random act of crazyness, haha, but here we are none the less.
 As you can see in the previous post, Birthday Party in the Fast Lane, our dining room use to be red. We liked the red, my husband liked the red a lot actually, but after some persuasion he agreed to let me paint it. I did tell him if he really didnt like the color I would paint it back red, but lucky for me he doesn't mind the new color.

We ended up painting it "relaxed navy" found at Lowes, and this is what it looks like now...

Well what do you think? I really like it...but... the rest of the house is still painted in a very traditional color palette. Oh well I guess I will need to paint the rest of the house! ha ha ha. 

Do you remember the table and chairs that are now in the dining room? They were the ones in the posting "weekend project". Oh yes, those are the ones! I think they turned out just great, and I am pleased to show them off. Of course now I will need new fabric for the seats, but oh well.

I would say I am about half way done with our dining room. I plan to get new window treatments, and also a rug for under the table perhaps? I also want to find some botanical prints for the east wall, it is a bit naked at the moment; and you know me, it will be a DIY project. I am thinking about hunting down an old botanical calendar, and framing some of the pictures. 

Overall, we are happy with the dining room...so onto the next room right ;)

Weekend Project Time

Happy weekend to you all! What are your plans this weekend? Do they involve shoveling snow? LUCKY! However, here in the south (as I always call it) we are going to be somewhere in the mid to upper 70s this weekend (which would be fine if it were September, but it’s NOVEMBER!). So with all this nice weather, I am going to attempt to start my table overhaul! What is this table I speak of you may wonder, here is the story….

Well, since you asked; Last spring my oh so amazing and very understanding hubby drove me the hour to Oklahoma City so I could buy an old and very beat up table and chairs out of some guys shop. HA! My hubby loaded it up in our trailer, no questions asked, and away we went. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself! Sadly, for the last 6 months it has sat in our garage (big sad face) BUT THIS WEEKEND I PLAN TO GET A GOOD START ON IT!

First, I plan on taking all the seats off of the chairs, disassembling them, tossing the old foam and yucky fabric, then sand all the chairs. (That should be the easy part) Then I hope to get started on the table… my only problem is moving the big thing.

I should also mention that I have decided to paint, rather than stain, my table and chairs and here is why: First of all I have never worked with stain on such a large scale… So I was a bit intimidated to start out with. Second I have my new spray gun (YAY) Third, I want the table and chairs to be black to match the hutch we already have. With that said if I don’t like the outcome, maybe I will try to stain it… who knows.

I have already ordered and picked up the fabric for the chairs. I chose this….

A dark red fabric, with branches that are brown and black. Since our dining room is Red, with brown curtains and we have a black hutch I thought it would tie in with everything perfectly! I purchased the fabric at Jo Anns during one of their %50 off home décor fabric sales.  I hope to have enough fabric left over to also make a matching table runner :D

As I stated above it’s already November, I had originally  hoped to have this project done in time for my grandparents visit in October…. Now I am hoping for it to be done in time for our kiddos 5^th birthday party! Since we moved away from home when he was 2, he has never really had a birthday party. This year though, he is going to have one! He is really into the Disney Cars 2 movie, so we are planning a Cars 2 birthday party… more to come on that!  Right now all we have is our breakfast nook, and I’m having serious doubts about fitting 13 kids around that table!

So here we go!

Here they are- my table and chairs! Aren’t they wonderful! (what a steal for $75 bucks)

And here they are after I primed them....

And here is one painted black... eek! exciting! :D

Half of them in the house.... getting there.....

Ok, so we ran into a minor snag, (we as in my wonderfull hubby and I... see told ya he's a good sport, helping me out and all) when we were taking the cloth off of the old seats, we noticed the wood was falling apart. It was so old and yucky we decided it would be best to make new wooden seat bases...

Isn't he a great man!!! :D So darn handy, and never complains about my crazy projects. (I'm so lucky)

And there they are, the new wooden seat bases (well there is one anyways)...

Alright, on to the table... As you can see we took it apart, I have decided to spray only the legs black. I am going to sand down and stain the top a dark drown. I just think if I paint it all black it will look so dark! So thats the plan... so far any ways ;)

After I went to the city and got enough foam for the chairs, I covered the seats. I think they turned out pretty nice, for my first time anyways! Jack Jack approves of the first chair.

*MORE TO COME*

 

Dresser Overhaul

 With the holidays around the corner, and our families planning their visits, I decided it was time to get to work on our guest room. You might remember that we just purchased our home not too long ago, so it’s still getting put together. To top that off we are recent college grads, and much of what we have is hand me downs or thrift store finds.  

Our guest room consisted of… well nothing! Haha! We didn’t even have a bed for it, we had to start from square one all while keeping our budget in check. After the bed situation was solved I found a great deal on my local Craigs list (which I LOVE btw) for two small black chairs. The chairs had been used in a waiting area of an office that closed, but I thought they were cute, and the price was GREAT! The fabric on the chairs however, not so much!(that’s another project)

So anyways, on to the dresser. I had a dresser sitting in our garage for quite some time (well it use to be in storage) It was my sons dresser that my mom had painted for him. Before that it was my youngest sisters dresser. It’s a very solid piece and I am happy I decided to keep it. Check out how cute it was for my rock star! (yes that's chalk board paint on the door and blocks turned knobs. My moms amazing)

Keep in mind this is really my first furniture re do, or as some people say up cycle. With the exception of my desk I guess. (yet another project I should post) I didn’t really know what I was doing. I of course googled a few things, and called mom and dad. I needed to know things like what paint to use, do I need to sand and prime (the answer is YES) etc. (Have I mentioned that my parents are professional painters, yea I call them a lot. “mom how do I do this” “Dad how do I do that” I’m sure they are sick of me by now.)  So after I decided I was going to paint this gold with black crackle I set out to Lowes to get the supplies. I got  primer, gold paint, black paint, crackle glaze, and a protective top coat. Then I got to work.

My first time using my spray gun was with the primer. It was a lot of trial and error to say the least. I also got a crash course in a clogged spray gun. GRRRRR Luckily my hubby helped me take it apart and clean it. Thanks babe!  For anyone who is also just learning, I recommend thinning out the primer/paint at a rate of about 3oz  of water per half quart of paint/primer.  Of course I am no expert and this may not be correct, but it worked for me, and I am happy with that. After I primed it, I let it dry overnight. Then I used the same technique to put my gold color paint on. The color reminded me more of someone who tanned too much, rather than a gold but I went with it (trial and error right?!?!)

After I let the gold paint dry overnight I brushed on the crackle glaze. This part needed to be done with a brush. A good tip for those of you who are doing this for the first time, when you apply your crackle glaze if you paint in a very neat “row, after row” or straight lines, your end result will produce a very neat (as in tidy) crackle pattern, If you kind of slop on the crackle paint and brush it around, you will have a random crackle pattern. Personally I like how the very straight cracks look. After the crackle glaze has dried for 1-4 hours you can paint your top color on. This will also need to be done with a brush. When you apply the top color make sure you don’t back brush if you do the crackle will be less likely to work.

After the top color dries overnight you can apply the clear protective coat. I used my spray gun for this, but it could be done by hand too. Now all you need to do it let it dry and you are done!

My dresser is up in the guest room, but I have yet to get knobs for it. Well yet to find knobs I like! I plan to make the hour drive to my “local” Hobby Lobby next week, I am sure I will find something there.

UPDATE! I have found knobs! The last 6 of their kind :D it was fate ;)  Oh yea, that and they were %50 OFF YAY! Hobby Lobby always has such great deals! I thought they were so pretty!

Dresser is almost done. I just need to put the latch on the door, and it's done. :D What do you think? (sorry for the bad pics, all I have is my camera on my phone. The hubby took our camera for his trip) I think I will stop downtown to the local glass store and see how much it would be to have a mirror cut for the door. Maybe etch some floral design onto it? I'm not sure, it just needs something, don't you think?