fabulous french (ish) coffee table find

I found this amazing rusted and gross table on the side of the road one day while I was out driving searching for junk (ie. trash). And I just went searching for the before photos I took to show you but they are no where to be found :(

So, you'll just have to take my word. This thing was a piece of junk. All the tiles around the center are metal. They were rusted pretty bad, it looks like someone left it sitting outside maybe on a patio or something and the weather took it's toll on it. The wood was in decent shape, at least not broken or falling apart and the entire center of the table was missing. The metal legs were in great shape but were this hammered silver with black finish - not bad, but left a lot to be desired.

Despite all this I tossed it in the back of my van and scooted home quick before someone else decided it was something THEY needed :) Since then this table has just sat in my garage. It's not a small table - at least 3 foot square, so it's rather large to have to keep moving over and over again. One day I had an epiphany (I constantly work on problems like the center of the coffee table, over and over again until a solution comes to me) and realized I had recently picked up this nice square frame one day at GW while it was 30% off. Not a bad deal - frame and glass for $6. Once it was painted it would be great. I wondered to myself - "self, will that frame fit in the center of that coffee table?" so, I skipped slowly walked over to the table and held the frame next to it. Yup, looked close. Hmm...put it up against the back of the table...still close. Then lost all finesse and just crammed the frame in the hole. It fit!!! And it fit perfectly, you know, like it was made to go in that hole.

After dancing myself around the garage with happiness I got my super yummy chalk paint out and got to painting. I painted in in Old White and then black washed it and distressed it to no end. Waxed with clear and medium wax. When that was all painted I went to work on the image for the center. I went over to my favorite graphic website - the Graphics Fairy - and found a graphic I wanted to use. Then I enlarged it and did this fancy hold the fabric {drop cloth} on top of the paper and up against the window and trace technique. Worked like a charm. Glued it to a piece of foam core, put a couple coats of hard coat modpodge on it and then put it all together.

Here's the end result: (Don't mind the glare of the glass on the center)

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?