Small Table-Project #1

This is our very first project. Once we decided to try and refurbish some furniture, we started looking at places to purchase or find some items. We visited some Goodwills and Salvation Army but did not have any luck. There is a local auction house close to us that does online auctions and depending on the week, there are some cheap finds that can be made to look good with a little bit of work. This was the first piece we found. We knew we did not want to start with a massive piece of furniture. We wanted to start on a smaller scale and see if we could take a worn down item and make it look good. So as we started watching the auctions and looking for 1) cheap items and 2) manageable refurbished pieces, we came across this small table. It appears it was a small gold table when it was first made but that was quite some time ago. The color was faded throughout the entire piece. The design on top was intriguing. It was going very cheaply so we made a bid on it and won it. Since this was our first purchase on the online auction, a couple of things became very evident when we went and payed for it and took possession. It looked worse in person then it did in the pictures. It was made of a plastic like material. I am still completely unsure of what the small table was made out of. It was almost a mix between a metal and plastic. And finally there was one of the legs that wobbled just a little bit. The wobbled did not affect the ability of the table to stand on its own so it became more of an unconvinced more then anything.

Now that we had possession of the piece, we needed to come up with a game plan as to how to turn this into something newer and chic. First we cleaned the table with some simple water and white cleaning vinegar mix. Mostly water with just a splash of vinegar. We used a washcloth and just rubbed down the table. This little bit of cleaning got rid of the dust and helped to bring the faded gold color back to just a little bit of a shine.

So you can see the difference in the crispness of the color after just a simple cleaning. We knew we wanted to change the color and get rid of the gold. The discussion we were having was about the design. I was afraid paint would cover the design. However, I knew we would try and sell it after we finished refurbishing it and I did not want to put in the time to work on the design with a small paint brush when we would not be able to get enough on the sell to justify the time spent repainting the design. So again being new to this we are learning as we go. We have to make decisions on each individual piece based on how much time are we going to spend on it versus how much money are we looking to sell it for. In the end we made the decision to paint over the entire piece and hope for the best. We decided on painting the entire piece one solid color. Since we are looking at selling this, we decided to go with black thinking black would make the piece more purchasable to more people.

We spray painted it with black. We did not get a picture of the spray paint that we used and we do not remember the brand nor the paint specs. Sorry. This was the first project so we forgot to get some pictures due to the excitement of starting to get to work on different items. We will get better so if you are doing something similar and are wanting to know what we are using then keep coming back and as we add more posts and items, we will get pictures of the materials we are using. At this point we liked how the black looked but we thought it needed just a splash of color to break up the black. We went back and forth with a couple of different ideas but settled with this.

And this is the final product. We added a white painted around the rim of the table to give it just a splash of color and break up the black. We used some glue to take the wobble out of the leg. We also used a clear coat protective layer painted on top to help keep the table from becoming damaged by water in the future. Overall as our first initial project into this new venture, we were pleased with how this turned out. It makes a nice small little table next to a couch or chair to set a drink or remote down on and it would look right in place with any living room suite using black.

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