Coffee table makeover

Traditional coffee table makeover. From drab (and booooring) to fab!

Here's the fantastic before. The coffee table is in the center - I redid the end tables too, but I am saving that for another post :)

And the fantastically colorful after:


The base is painted with Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint in Antibes green and distressed and waxed with clear wax. Chalk paint is the best paint ever! No sanding, no priming, just wipe the dirt off and paint it :) I was lucky with this table because the original color was hunter green so it worked well under the Antibes green.

The top was painted with a half and half mix of old white and water. Slop it on and quickly wipe it off. If too much comes off, repeat. If it's too white, wipe harder. It's simple but you have to work it fast.

I made the damask stencil. I used damask dings and found the one I thought would work. Then I saved it as a .jpg and found this place online where it would blow up my image as big as I wanted and I could save it as a .pdf on my computer and print it out. I printed it out on plain printer paper and taped the image together and lined it up on my table to make sure it was the right size. Then I did something super intelligent (aka. stupid) and used an exacto on TOP of the table to cut it out. About half way through I realized what a not so great idea that was, but decided I could probably line it all up when I was done and spray paint it and make it go away (it didn't actually happen that way).

So, when I was done with my super intelligent cutting, on TOP of the table, I used my trusty Elmer's spray adhesive to make my copy paper a stencil. I knew I would be quick so I figured the paper would work. After I sprayed on the adhesive, I let it dry for a while so the paper wouldn't stick permanently to the top of the table. I stuck it down where I wanted (I made sure to line up the dot in the middle and then went from there).

When it was all done I used my trusty spray paint in hot pink (same hot pink from the last post )


I sprayed on two light coats - but I had to be careful because when the paper got wet it wanted to lift and I had to push it back down. I forgot to do this in one part and got some overspray on the table, but decided it was ok.

When the second coat was on I pulled off the make shift stencil. Then I really could see the cut marks in the table and I was not pleased at all. I stood there for a while unhappy and then remembered I had bought some chalk ink markers for a different project and I could trace the cut lines with the chalk ink markers and call it intentional!


I think it turned out beautiful. What do you think?