Spiffing Up My End Table

Spiffing up? Anyone care to guess what I mean? Spiffing up = painting, of course. Duh! That’s how I spiff up everything :)

You may remember I found a super cool end table last summer at a garage sale for $5. I was really excited about it and I loved that it was wood and hoped to keep it that way. But after it sat in our garage for almost a year I realized I would never get around to stripping it and refinishing it because I really don’t like to do that sort of thing. I mean, come on, sanding? No thank you! I will do whatever it takes to not have to sand something. What I do like to do though, is paint stuff! It’s so much easier :) So that’s exactly what I did. Just a reminder, here is the before shot:

Isn’t it wonderful? I think it’s super cute. But yes, in really bad shape. There were several water marks on top and I knew with all of the groves on the front that it wouldn’t be that much fun to refinish, or even paint for that matter. But while I was painting my console, I decided to just go ahead and paint this little bad boy too. In the end, I’m really glad I painted it. Let’s face it, I might have ended up wishing I had painted even if I had refinished it because I like painted furniture so much. There is nothing like painting something white to give it that clean look. I love it!

And now for the reveal! Doesn’t it look fresh? And modern? Love, love, love!

Originally I had planned on using it in the guest room but once I finished it I thought it might work well in the living room. Ever since I rearranged in there, I haven’t had a proper end table and we sort of miss that. A place where we can put a cup of coffee and a lamp is a definite plus. Since there are no overhead lights in this room, we like to each have a light on our side of the couch.

Plus, I like adding more white in there. I goes along with the coffee table a bit more. And since the dining room connects, it goes nicely with the newly painted console.

And after the fact, am I glad I painted instead of refinished it? You betcha! It’s definitely more “me”. And it only took about 10 coats of paint. Well, I might have exaggerated. Maybe 7 coats. No joke. There was a lot of stains on this little guy that needed to be covered. But it was my own fault, I should have used oil based paint instead of being lazy and using latex. Lesson learned. Not that I will necessarily use oil based paint next time (because I’m lazy like that and hate cleaning it up afterward), but I did learn that if I only want to paint a couple of coats that is the way to go :) Haha!

And more painting continues at our house as I have several other paint projects in the works. Did you know that last week was National Painting Week? I played along and painted a room (I mentioned it on Monday). Hopefully, tomorrow I will reveal that room here on the old blog… stay tuned!