Yellow end table : The little table that could

First I stripped the paint off the whole table.  The paint was quite uneven on the table and I thought I’d better just strip it rather than sand it down.  Here’s a shot of me taking the stripper off of the top.  

I, in all of my beginner “wisdom”, figured the paint would strip off of the table the same way as it did on my nightstand top and all would be well with the world; I’d paint the table and be done.  Well, it didn’t work quite that way.  When I took the stripper off, there wasn’t wood underneath, there was this weird laminate or whatever that blue stuff is.  I figured it wasn’t that big of a deal since it was smooth, but once I got to the sides of the table all hell broke loose!  The sides were covered with press board and they started just basically disintegrating when I took the stripper off.  It got even worse when I tried to sand the surface smooth.  It was an absolute disaster and several times I debated just giving up and moving on.  But part of me wanted to see if I could actually make this work somehow.

My husband suggested covering the sides with a wood veneer so that it would be a smooth surface to work with that we knew wouldn’t fall apart.  We tried it on the sides (and he also added it to the inside of the back panel to cover up that hole you can see in the before picture) and it worked out really well.  He primed the whole table and once the primer was dry, I realized there were bubbles in the veneer!  Grrr!!  By this point I HATED this table and just wanted to throw it in the trash!  I was so over all the problems it was giving me.  But, obviously, I pushed through and was still curious if it could actually work out.  So I popped a few tiny holes in the veneer, filled the holes with glue, clamped them down and then filled the holes with wood filler once the glue was dry.  I also filled in the little dent on the top of the table with wood filler.  Once I got those spots sanded down it was finally ready for paint.  I don’t have any pictures of this whole ordeal because I was so upset and embarrassed that I thought I’d just sweep this whole thing under the rug and not tell anyone about it if it didn’t turn out!  Haha!

Maybe in hindsight, I wouldn’t have stripped the paint off the table and would have just sanded it down.  But I had no idea this would have happened, so I never would have known.  This experience makes me a little leary of buying painted furniture in the future (to refinish/paint) because I can’t actually see what’s underneath the paint.  I haven’t bought any painted furniture since, but I’m sure I will again…I’m just going to have to really love it!

I knew I wanted to try out some of my new Annie Sloan Chalk Paint on this table because of all the varying surface types.  I had heard that ASCP covers tons of different surfaces including stained wood, painted wood, metal, leather, and new wood, so this was the perfect test to see how this paint actually held up to three different surfaces on one piece.  I was hoping the chalk paint would help everything look cohesive once I was finished.  I mixed up one part Arles and four parts Old White to make this color and when I compared it to my ASCP color chart, it is almost identical to her Cream color.  So now I know, if I want to create this color again I can just buy the Cream color instead of having to do all that mixing!  And for an extra little surprise, I painted the inside of the drawer Duck Egg Blue.

And here it is…the finished end table in all of it’s glory!

I still wasn’t sure about this piece until I got it totally painted, waxed, and buffed.  Every step of the way I was unsure about if I could really pull this off and makeover this piece.  I’m SO happy I persevered and didn’t give up on this piece.  I absolutley love how it turned out!  I obviously didn’t do any distressing this time.  I was not about to take any chances with having the blue show through on the top or having anything else go wrong!

The table now sits in my newly painted living room and I must say – I love it!  I’m just so happy with it, maybe partly because it is such a pretty, happy yellow color!