~Shabby to Chic~

It all started with this table that I purchased at a yard sale for $3.00 .  The guy was asking $5.00, but agreed to take my offer.  My daughter said, “Gosh mom, you are so cheap!”  I told her that by getting something at  a lesser price, just puts extra money in my pocket to spend at the next yard sale.  She’ll learn.

The table had some “issues”.   First of all, there were 3 holes drilled all the way through the top of it.  Although the rest of the table was made of wood, the top was not.  Therefore, just using wood filler was not an option.  The surface was more like a very hard textured laminate and it wasn’t even glued on well.  I decided to chisel it off and see what was underneath.  It was some sort of particle board.  Why in the world they would put this on top of a wood table is beyond me!

I knew I had a challenge ahead of me.  I could cut a piece of wood to fit the top, but because there was a “lip” of real wood bordering the top, I knew it would be hard to get an exact cut.  

I looked around the garage and found a product called Plastic Wood. It was small can (a "hand-me-down") which was half empty.  I had never worked with this product before and really had no idea how it was to be used.  The can said that it “looks like and acts like real wood”.  I figured “what the heck”, I’ll just slap some on with a putty knife and see what happens. I didn’t have enough to cover even a quarter of the top, but I liked the hard surface that it was giving me, so I headed to the hardware store to purchase more.  Boy, that stuff is expensive.  I ended up spending almost $15.00 to get the amount that I needed.  Oh well, the table only cost me $3.00, right?

I kept spreading the Plastic Wood over the entire top of the table.  I never could get the even surface that I wanted.  I tried using a wider putty knife, but that  didn’t seem to help.

I grabbed my handy electric hander and did the best I could at smoothing things out.  I gotta tell you, this Plastic Wood stuff is hard as a rock!  Even with a coarse grit sandpaper, I could hardly tell if I was making a difference.  I sanded the rest of the table to prep it for painting.

After going over the table several times, I decided to “call it quits”.  Like my husband often says, “it is what it is”.  I took a rag and wiped off all the dust.

Before painting the table, I took a candle and rubbed it across any areas that I wanted to look as if it had been worn from usage.  

So, I’ve never done this before, but I decided to paint my table with craft paint.  I did this mainly because I found the color that I thought would work perfectly for the technique that I was attempting.  Bimini Blue; I just love the name of it.  It makes me think of being someplace tropical.

With a sponge brush, I painted the entire surface of the table.  2 bottles of the craft paint was all it took. My paint investment was less than $1.50!  Not bad, eh?

After allowing the paint to dry overnight, I lightly sanded the whole table. The paint promptly came off in the areas where I had applied the candle wax, therefore exposing the wood beneath.

The next step is my favorite:

Taking my trusty can of one-step polyurethane (has stain in it), I brush a light coating over the entire surface of the table.  This particular piece is great because it has little “nook and crannies” where the finish can get “caught”, which creates depth and interest.

Applying a polyurethane that has a stain in it serves two purposes.  It seals the paint and also gives it “aged” finish.