Little Weekend Project: Table Facelift

It is crazy, dare I say ridiculous, that I haven't blogged in over four months.  The main reason (excuse) is that my husband and I bought a house at the end of March, and we have been busy working on the house and settling into it in the midst of our already busy lives.  For so many reasons I can't wait to be completely settled, but one of the top reasons is so that I can spend more time on blogging and making tutorials.
I'm sorry that this post will not be make up related in any way, but I do hope that as my blog develops more it will include other subjects such as cooking, crafts and ponderings of life.


Like a lot of us, I had a long weekend in celebration of Independence Day.  Mine was even longer because I took today off of work as well.  I really wanted to make my weekend worthwhile and not just spend it sleeping in and watching movies.  I always feel like I wasted my weekends when I do that, plus, my husband went out of town to visit a friend, so I had the entire house to myself.  I decided that I wanted to do a little table DIY project, and this is what I did:

I started with this junky table that I purchased from Goodwill for $4.  I liked the shape of it and the sliding doors, and it was pretty stable.

I didn't like the worn away and dated handles, the gold tipped feet on the legs or the faux wood look.  I have a subscription to Do It Yourself magazine, and a lot of what they do to update an item is to paint it.  It's simple and cheap as well as easy to tailor to your own color scheme.  I also wanted to go a step further and put on new handles and add fabric to the table top to give it some extra pizzaz.

Before I primed it, I made sure to clean it well with soap and water.  Since I got it from Goodwill, I have no idea where it came from.  It did have some cobwebs and dust on it, so it was just a good idea to wipe it down so there wouldn't be any nastiness trapped under the paint.  Then I primed it with a spray paint primer.  I took the doors out in order to give them a complete coat of primer, but I didn't completely coat the inside.  I figured the doors would be shut most of the time, so only I would be able to see the faux wood on the inside.

After the primer dried, I started to spray paint it black.  Of course, I couldn't help myself and had to tag the inside of it with my YouTube name.  I really had to control myself to not tag the inside of our porch which is where this whole project took place. :P

Because the top would be covered with fabric, I didn't worry too much about the blotchiness of the spray paint.  However, I did touch up the other parts that would be visible.  Probably it would have been easier just to use regular paint with a paintbrush and roller, but I didn't realize that until I had already started with the spray paint. (Sidenote: if you are using spray paint, make sure you are in a well ventilated area and wear a face mask.  You might not realize it, but spray paint gives off a lot of paint dust that gets everywhere -- you don't want that in your lungs!!)

I painted the doors cream to match the fabric I would use (not shown in picture).

Once the paint had dried on the doors, I put on new handles.  The screw holes were just a little wider than on the original handles, so I had my husband drill new holes for me.

For the fabric, I just cut a piece that measured the same as the table top.  I wasn't exactly sure if  it would stretch out or not, and I figured it would be better to have too much fabric than not enough.  I used Mod Podge matte glue and covered half of the table top with it.  I placed the fabric on top and made sure it reached to all of the corners and edges.  Then, using an old gift card, I smoothed out the surface.  Once that was done, I spread glue on the other half of the table and smoothed out the fabric over top of it.  After that, I applied more glue over the surface to seal it in.  Once that was dry (about 20 minutes), I applied more glue on the top.  I did end up trimming the fabric around the edges, but it was not very much.

That is pretty much it!  It was a fun project to do, and if I undergo another project like this, I will probably film the whole process and make a DIY video out of it. :)