Refurbished Coffee Table

I acquired this coffee table as part of the great coffee table swap of 2008. A friend of a friend got a new coffee table. They gave my friend their old coffee table. My friend gave me this coffee table. And I gave away my coffee table, which had cost about $20 at Target and was mostly made of cardboard.

Not made of cardboard = upgrade.

I spray painted it this lovely turquoise color. I did a pretty crappy job. Lots of people are out there looking for ways to make new things look old and chippy. Frankly I've no idea why. My technique for making my coffee table look old and chippy is a bad paint job and about 7 years of putting my feet on it. 

So first thing I did was sand the top, and only the top. There are lots of little details on this coffee table, and I didn't want to ruin them with my detail sander or spend hours sanding by hand. So, top gets sanded to bare wood, everything else gets a very light sanding. Then we stain.

Oh yeah. Looks better already.

Then, everything that's turquoise gets painted a blue that matches the rest of the room, and two solid coats of polyurethane on the top, so that my cups and feet don't do a number on it. 

After.

Not terribly exciting, but there you have it.