furniture painting – DIY + HANDMADE + VINTAGE

An old handmade wood phone table; something that might not catch everyone’s eye. However, it definitely caught mine. I saw potential in this old table, and knew it would be a great DIY project for my 11 year old daughter to help me with!

This summer I have made it a priority to involve either one or both of my children in any DIY project that I work on. To be able to include them in what I am passionate about, and to teach them the basic use of different hand and power tools, has helped me to fall in love all over again with transforming basic pieces of furniture into unique pieces of art.

For my latest project, my daughter got to pretty much run the show. I let her choose the paint color and many design aspects of the entire piece. She picked out the new drawer pull, drawer liner, and the sign for the side of the table, and she even picked out the cute vintage phone to help stage our new phone table.

Below is a series of photos that we took during our project.

The first step to any good restoration project, is sanding. After sanding, Cam got to work on painting the table. She mixed Beyond Paint’s ‘Soft Grey’ & ‘Pebble’ and called it Cobblestone. Once the table had a few coats of grey, we then worked together to stain and poly the entire piece to give it and aged look as well as give it a nice protective coat of poly. For this, we used Rust-oleum’s Stain + Polyurethane in Dark Walnut. I almost forgot to mention, that I also ‘knocked off’ the top trim detail on the cabinet to give it a more modern and clean look, and because one edge was already broken off when I got it.

The next step is always the hardest: waiting for it to dry! During this time, I taught Cam the fun of using Mod-Podge to apply a piece of postcard scrapbook paper as a liner in the drawer. I think she liked doing this so much that she might just mod-podge our entire apartment!

Cam enjoyed picking out different yardsticks to use for the front of the drawer and the top of the cabinet. Once she had the yardsticks picked out, I got to work measuring and cutting them with a miter saw. I had to do a little mix and match on the top with some different sizes, but in the end it all worked out and they fit perfectly! Cam was in charge of laying down the wood glue, and placing the yard sticks in their places, then we hammered them into place. I used my nail gun at first, but unfortunately, once I got to the thinner yardsticks, the power of the nail gun was a bit too much, so I went back to the good ol’ fashioned hammer and nail, and actually like this look better when working on vintage piece.

Once all of the yardsticks were attached, we sanded down the edges to give them a more uniform look. Then it was time to add some stain and poly! A bit of brushing it on and dabbing it on gave it a nice worn wood look.

The next step was for me to attach the new handle. Since there had never been a handle or a pull on this drawer, I had to measure for the two new holes to be drilled. I’m no perfectionist when it comes to making things even or straight, but somehow, I got it on there perfectly in the right spot!

Finally, we attached the phone sign to the side, tied an old key to the front drawer pull and it was complete.

We took our new phone table on a little joy ride around the city of Eau Claire until we found a quiet spot for a photo shoot. I wanted to name the table, but Cam said we couldn’t or she would get too attached to it! So, here it is, our nameless, wonderfully restored and reinvented phone table:

Before:

Table After (Above and Below):

Thanks so much for joining us on our latest DIY adventure!

As always, feel free to subscribe to keep up with our latest projects!
Thanks for reading,
~ Kelly (and Cam).

There once was a sad little table that no one wanted. It was tossed into a dark corner in a garage, waiting and hoping to be rescued. All it wanted was someone who could see it’s potential and possibility that it had underneath all of the scrapes, scuffs and scars.

Full of spider webs, dust and debris, it waited and waited and waited.

One day, the garage door opened. It saw the sunlight for the first time in what seemed liked forever and it thought, ‘What is this!?’

It felt someone pick it up and suddenly the next thing it knew, it saw the garage door disappearing in the distance. ‘Going to the dump I suppose.” The sad little table thought.

Little did it know, it was on it’s way to be rescued. The table was frightened when it noticed that it was placed in what seemed like another dark corner of a building. ‘Here we go again!’ It thought.

The garage door didn’t shut, and the table was set on top of drop cloth. It heard a loud noise suddenly and it felt all of the years of use, abuse, wear and tear slowly fading. All of it’s scars were sanded away. Deep down it could once again sense a little bit of hope and it knew that this time, something was different.

As a new layer of paint was applied, it felt incredible. If tables could smile, this table would have been wearing the biggest smile you’ve ever seen.

You see, once the tables scars were cleaned out, and sealed off, it was able to live again. It was rescued, redeemed and renewed, much like how God uses hard times in our lives, to cleanse us , wash away our scars and make us new in Him. He never loses His vision for us, we can never be too far gone, that our loving Father loses sight of our potential in all that He created us to be.

This is why I do what I do, this is why I rescue things that have been forgotten. Everything deserves a second chance and a new lease on life.

If you have a piece of furniture that you are thinking of tossing, take a second look. Maybe it just needs someone to care enough to look at it with a new set of eyes.

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Tag: furniture painting

Phone Table Makeover

The little table that could.