Ten Dollar Table (Part 1)

Since I started redoing furniture, friends are always texting me or tagging me on Facebook letting me know that there is something on the side of the road or a great garage sale in a nearby neighborhood. Some are sweet enough to give me pieces of their own to remake into something new.

One of those treasures came my way recently. A friend at church gave me her husband's little side table for only $10!

I started the transformation by completely sanding the top down to the bare wood. I had a vision of a beautiful newly stained wood top with a painted bottom.

Enter the orbital sander!

You could see the years of wear and tear coming off instantly! (The left side is unsanded and the right is sanded.)

It was shaping up the way I hoped it would! I did the sides by hand. One of these days, I'll get a dremmel tool to help me with this kind of detail work, but for now my hands are the dremmel tool.

Once the top was finished, I flipped the table upside down so I could unscrew the top. I needed to work on the body and it would be easier if I could access it without the top on. Most tables work like this. There's a few screws on the underside and with a few twists of a screwdriver, the top comes right off!

Here is the underside of the top once I removed it. The small piece of wood is a guide for the drawer.

The table was pretty dirty - inside and out - so I used a bowl of warm water and some regular dish soap to clean it up. You can see the dark spots of mildew here.

I scrubbed the inside and cleaned out more cobwebs and dried up spiders than I care to admit.

I don't mind this step though. Sometimes, all it takes for an old piece of furniture to look new again is some elbow grease and dish soap.

I took the old hardware off the drawer and gave the front and the rest of the table body a good sanding by hand. It would give the surface some "tooth" to help my paint stick and it smoothed it out. The old poly top coat was cracking and flaking from years of wear and I wanted a smooth surface to work with.

Deciding what type of paint to use is always a fun process to walk through. You really have to think about the piece you're working with. What kind of finish does it have on it? Do I want full coverage or some flaking? Will I distress it heavily or just on some of the high points? What colors do I have in my stockpile?

After some consideration, I decided to paint the body of my $10 table in Mustard Seed Yellow by Miss Mustard Seed. I wasn't sure if the paint would stick with my hand-sanding job alone, so I took precautionary measures. I put a layer of Tough Coat on first. This would give the paint a good surface to adhere to and prevent the color of the wood from bleeding through. The last thing you want is for the wood to peek through your beautiful paint job when you're all done.

Tough coat goes on milky and dries clear. It's shaping up to be one of my favorite products in Miss Mustard Seed's line.

Next, it was time to get ready to paint. I like clean lines when I paint. I feel that it gives your pieces a much more professional look to them and when you pay attention to details, people notice.

With that in mind, I always try to do a good tape job with my drawers. I want clean lines where the paint will end, so I taped around the sides, underneath, and into the drawer itself.

The entire front panel was going to get painted and I considered adding a fun surprise on the sides when you open it up. Maybe a cute stenciled pattern? C'mon...who doesn't like surprises?

I mixed up a batch of Mustard Seed Yellow and added some of the Bonding Agent as well. This was step two in my arsenal of tricks to get the paint to stick. Bonding Agent is a product that helps milk paint stick to your surface. It prevents chipping and gives you more complete coverage. Sometimes, it may lighten the color of the paint when you're mixing it, but it does not change the color when the paint dries. It only took about 3 tablespoons of powder, water, and bonding agent to cover this end table.

Don't be afraid if your first coat goes on thin and ugly. This is totally normal and you haven't done anything wrong. Just stick with it and add a few more coats.

After two coats went on, I took the piece outside to sand it a bit. This step helps to smooth out some of the clumps that may have not have gotten mixed in and dissolved. Miss Mustard Seed's Milk Paint contains natural ingredients like clay, minerals, and pigments. Because you have to mix it yourself, you may get small clumps in your paint job, but they can be smoothed out with your brush or with a sanding block.

Here's a close up of what I mean by little clumps. (This is probably due to my mixing job more so than the powder.)

After sanding, I put another coat of paint on. I turned the table upside down so that I could see any spots I may have missed on the underside of the legs and the sides. I learned this trick from Allison Griffith of Refunk My Junk.