A Tale of Two Tables (PT. 1)

I know. I know.  I'm going to start blogging more, but then I don't.  My excuse....WE ARE LIVING LIKE THE CAVEMEN DID!  What??!...I came up with this cool idea to shut off my cable, landline, and internet in order to save money and be able to shop around for a better bundle deal (we were bundled with Comcast for all three services).  Ok, so when I came up with this idea it wasn't like a REAL idea...it was more like me just venting.  The problem?...My husband thought it would be a GREAT idea, and once that man is on board there is no getting him off board, or on a different ship, or even tackling him and throwing him overboard.  Hence the statement, we are living like cavemen and cavewomen and cavechildren.  It seriously isn't that bad, the kids are reading more, there is more family time, more time to go to thrift stores and to DIY, and for the love of God no more ESPN!!  Enough rambling, here is the play-by-play on one of the two table that I have redone.  First I started with this:

(You can read about where I got the table in this post.)

The table was a creamy kind of color...in the photos it looks white, but it definitely was more of a creamy buttermilk kind of color.  Speaking of buttermilk, can you believe that people actually drink that stuff??  If you are one of those people please explain to me how you convinced yourself that buttermilk is good.  Ok, moving on.  So I liked the quaint little table, but it was outdated.  I first spray painted it white.....and it was just ehhh...then black...still didn't like it.  I feel like black or ORB has become so safe.  So I primed it back white. (Sorry people, I don't have pictures of all these steps, it's just one of those things.)  White didn't work, black didn't work, so the most logical and totally DARING (not really) thing to do was paint it a soft grey.  LOVE.  The color is called Castle Path by Krylon and it is in a Gloss finish.  I bought the paint on clearance at KMart a few months back.  They were clearancing out all of their spray paint so for $1/each I bought every color that I may one day need.  Not like a hoarding problem or anything...maybe just 10 cans.  Let me tell you though, my spray paint collection is starting to grow.  If we ever have a major power outage I will be able to keep myself occupied.  I could probably spray paint by candelight for about a week.  Back to the table.... when I first bought the little guy I knew that I wanted to do chevron stripes across the top.  I tried the just-tape-it-off-and-go method but it was all wonky.  I decided to use my awesome math skills and measure things out to get a more accurate stripe.  I lightly marked the sections with a pencil so that I would know where to points of my stripe should meet.  I only did this for the first stripe and then followed my pattern throughout the table.  Kind of like this: 

The white tape is just regular old masking tape so then I got kind of worried about paint bleed to I decided to lightly paint over it with my base color so it would help to seal the edges of the tape. (That way if the paint does bleed under the tape it will be the grey color and you will never know.)

Then I sprayed it with my white and tore off all of the tape before the paint was completely dry.

As for the finished result......so much cuter than before.....

My little $5.00 table looks like a million bucks baby...ok, maybe not a million, how about $29.99??  The tape held up pretty well.  There are a couple of spots that aren't perfection, but every DIY project has some kind of story to tell.  Both paints I used were by Krylon and were in a GLOSS finish. (The white is just their plain ol'white.)  I think the finish of the gloss adds to it's modern feel.  No more Grandma table around here people....we are now living in 2011. 

P.S. Can you believe that this year is almost over!!!?? 

So Much for the Yard Sale

Whenever I have a yard sale I try to update things without spending a bunch of time on things.  I've had this little table thingy FOREVER, well at least a good ten years, and it has served me well.  In my first apartment it was my phone stand, then it eventually migrated to the girls' room and was used as a nightstand, but in the new house there was just nowhere for my little friend.  So for a quick update I decided to give the wood top a quick spray of black paint.  Like I said, I don't like spending too much time on updating yard sale items so I didn't bother sanding the top or filling in any scratches, I just taped off the top and went to work. 

And YES, that is my backyard!!  Not so great huh?!  The house was a foreclosure, you know, one of those great priced homes with lots of potential.....yep, that kind.  In the backyard our only project has been keeping the weeds below our knees so that we can focus all of our time and money into the front.....for the whole curb appeal thingy.  Ok, so back to the star of this post....after it's little update I realized that our friendship isn't quite over yet.  This is what my laundry room looked like before when the door is open....

Yes....dirty laundry in all it's glory...not too cute huh?  So if I just shift the basket right behind that door then that will be tucked away and my little table thingy could live on that wall like this:

The dish/tray works perfect for when my husband comes in from work he now has something to empty his pockets in and it looks contained.  I had bought it at a thrift store for $.50 a long time ago and then spray painted it's little legs white for some contrast. 

In the top two drawers I have some miscellaneous DIY treasures, the next drawer holds my lonely socks, the ones that are missing their mates, and the third is for our grocery bags that we re-use.  Looking at it in the photos I think the picture is too high but for now it's ok, that picture and I are soon going to have a DIY date.  As a reminder,here is another look at the laundry-room-with-the-door-open picture:

And my NEW laundry-room-with-the-door-open picture:

 I'm feeling the change, maybe it's just because that me and that table have been together since the beginning or maybe because walking by that door and looking at a big basket of dirty laundry isn't that appealing.  Either way, this is how my laundry room is going to look for the minute.  Cost of this update....$0.00.  I love when that happens!  Do you have a piece of furniture that you just can't seem to part with or am I just weird like that?