From my one of my earlier posts, you may know that I love rummaging through yard sales on Saturday mornings. You also may know that I am new to the "art" of shopping yard sales successfully so I am still experiencing those newbie jitters every time I find something really neat for really cheap. It seriously is a rush to see something interesting as you are driving up to a yard sale and then try to quickly park the car and "casually" speed walk up to the sale before someone else grabs that item you are eyeing.
In this case, I couldn't see these cute tables from the street, but as I walked up to the yard, I honed in on them. The lady running the sale was really nice and was excited to sell them to me. They were in her mother's home and date back to sometime in the 1940s. Because I told her that I was going to update them and use them in my house, she sold both of them to me for 15 dollars! (Fabuless!)
As you can see from this picture, the tables were okay "as is" but they had the type of finish on them that I remember in my elementary school lunch room. Not really the look that I am trying to achieve in my home.
I really wanted to give these tables a pop of color so that they would stand out. My husband is addicted to blue, so when I asked what color I should paint them, he said he wanted them to be an aqua blue. I am totally loving the aqua blue colored couch on Good Luck Charlie on Disney Channel so he won this round. I had originally envisioned them as yellow, but maybe my next project will get a fresh coat of yellow - you will just have to wait and see! :)
I started to do some research on different distressing techniques. I usually distress by waiting for the paint to dry and then putting stain over it to then just wipe it off and leave a little bit of a residue. While I love the way this turns out, I wanted to diversify my technique and try something different.
I started by sanding down the tables to take that awful gloss off and dull the laminate finish. If you are painting over laminate, yes, you can sand it, and yes, you should sand it, just be careful not to sand too much. You can tell that you have sanded just enough when the color is dull. It really does make a difference when you go to paint if you have sanded it before applying the paint.
Once the tables were sanded, I painted both of the tables with a brown paint color that I picked up at Sherwin Williams. The best part about having two tables is that I can show you the before and after of each step!
Once I had painted both of the tables the brown color from Sherwin Williams, I decided that I still wanted them to be a darker brown (you will see why later on in the post). Once the paint had dried, I went over the paint with a Walnut Stain to darken it up a bit
I let the stain dry over night and headed back out to my garage during preschool time the next day to finish up my project.
I went over the tables with Intense Teal by Sherwin Williams. (NOTE - when you are buying paint to do a small table or project, do not buy the can unless you think you will use the color on multiple projects. You can buy the small jars or sample cans usually for between 3 - 6 dollars - much cheaper!).
I am a very impatient person so watching paint dry is one of my biggest challenges. I just want to see how my projects will turn out and really have a hard time waiting for each step to process before moving on to the next. Once I put my kids to bed that night, I went back out to the garage and started my new favorite distressing technique!
I bought a package of steel wool from Wal-mart - not the fine grade, you need medium to coarse. I took the steel wool and just started rubbing all over the tables to take off some of the teal paint and expose the undercoat of brown (now you understand why I painted with brown and stained before I applied the blue paint). I used a sanding sponge and went around the edges to give the tables that perfect distressed/banged up look. The best part of this step is that it doesn't have to be perfect. If you want it more heavily distressed on top and less on the legs, by all means, go for it! Also, if you want a different color to show through, for instance, yellow underneath and blue on top, instead of the brown, you would do 2-3 coats of yellow before applying the blue.
And now for the big reveal - my finished tables all set up in my NEW house (Yes, we finally moved in and are loving our new home - look forward to lots of new projects showcasing my new space!)
If you have any questions about this project, feel free to leave a comment or send us an email!
sincerely fabuless, Las Vegas.
No comments:
Post a Comment