COFFEE TABLE FIXER UPPER

I needed a coffee table. I thought I could do without one but my feet and my coffee were really begging me for something to rest themselves on while lounging on my couch. My favorite stores didn’t seem to have the right feel or look I was going for. Lucky for me my mom scored big time, with the PERFECT coffee table from a garage sale! $15 (after bargaining them down from $20). The structure of the table was perfect but it had a few imperfections on it. There wasn’t much work to do on it besides sand it. We took it outside, laid a towel down and used an electric sander. It would have been a lot more work sanding by hand because we needed to get pretty deep to get the stains and marker removed off the top.

After sanding it down we put a light coat of polyurethane on top to seal it in. My couch is dark brown so I wanted to keep the feel light and bright. The polyurethane would just seal it and not darken it. But immediately after we coated it, the original stain that was on the left side, came back out.

We sanded it down pretty deep again and you could still slightly see the stain on the left side. I’m not sure what it was… maybe oil/mold, it was deep nonetheless. After the second round I decided it needed to be covered. I could stain it darker or do a white-wash on it. And since I want to keep it light, I decided to white-wash the top. I just took some white paint I had around the house (Ben Moore Simply White), poured a little into a cup and added some water. Then I took an old rag and just lightly coated the top layer and the sides of the table. When doing this you always want to make sure you go with the grain of the wood and keep your strokes light and consistent.

After drying for an hour or so I coated the top with the polyurethane again. This time it covered the left over stain and gave me that bright light feel. So for $15 plus the top coat I got the perfect coffee table, custom to my home. Thats worth bundles to me!