Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Sofa Table Makeover

I watched Shrek yesterday, so I really wanted to start this off by saying....'once a upon a time.....' yes, but that's as far as I got. I'm not good with story telling, I'll leave that to the professionals :) 
As you know, this is my family room below:
 
This family room has been absent from a sofa table for a couple weeks. I have been making furniture for awhile now, selling it on the side. The sofa table that use to exist behind this couch, never sold it, probably didn't help that I wasn't actively trying to sell it cuz I liked it so much. Then I remembered that the reason why I made it was to sell it. So, I sold it. And it was a very very sad day. I kept telling myself I can make another one. But I didn't. Then!! A fairy godmother came along and bequeathed me her sofa table (and a few other beautiful antique goods that I will elaborate on later) ...See how this would make such an awesome Once Upon A Time Story???
 This is said sofa table. Good bones? Yes. Sturdy? Yes. Ugly? Yes.
 Obviously I needed to make this become my handsome prince, and that wasn't going to happen while it was green and brown and yuck all over. So, first I took out my sander and sanded the top and the bottom spindles that a cat or some little munchkin of the sort got in to.

Next step was to prime it. After a couple of coats of primer, I ran into a very annoying dilemma that I was all too familiar with when doing my tree stump coffee table.
The stain from the wood (I'm not sure what it is that causes it) but it started to show through. This happened after the first coat, and I lied to myself and said that another coat would cover it up, which I knew better. It didn't, came right through again, almost worse. So....the best way to fix it?? Probably better to do this before you start wasting coats and coats of paint .lol. Use an oil base primer. But since I don't have oil base paints in my house, I went the other direction and used some Polyurethane. Let it dry. Then I continued on and painted my topcoat.Worked like a charm! The ugly stains are no more :)
 As much as I loved my previous sofa table, I have got to say that I'm really really liking this one...almost a bit more. Yes. I just said it. I like this one more. Feeewww. Now that that's out :) You know how hard that is too say after putting a good two or three hours of your time into make a piece from scratch? lol
This one just has so much more space! I was concerned with this at first...but now I'm totally digging it. If I put all this stuff on the first table, it would have look ridiculous since it was sooo narrow.
The view from this angle is ten times better than what it used to be before.

 The inside of the drawers were a mess. It didn't help that I stood the legs in them when I was painted the main piece :) So, yes, they needed a little help. This was accomplished with some glue and card stock.
 I was thinking that I wanted to do something fun with the knobs, you know, go to hobby lobby and go nuts :) Well, that didn't happen. Mainly cuz the knobs aren't on sale this week and the coupon was only for wilton stuff. lol. and....well, I wanted it like...yesterday. So, I went up into my ever growing office of crap and found these knobs. I got them on sale a few years back at Target for 50 cents each. Not bad, eh? Now that they are on, I love that I went with a more simple look...goodness knows what I would have come back with from hobby lobby.
Total cost of project? Zero :) Can't say that very often. Everything I already had on hand, including all the accessories on top. This makes for a beautiful ending of a fairy tale story.......lol. Sorry, just had to end it like that.
Alicia