Vintage Drafting Table Turned Dining Table

While I was pregnant with Colten I knew the day would come when we would have family here after his birth and we would all need a place to sit and eat. Our little kitchen table would not cut it anymore. Plus we would now have 3 kids and again the kitchen table that seats 4 would not work. So I started looking on craigslist for dining room tables and I didn't ever find anything that I liked.

I wanted a table that was unique but beautiful and was my style. No luck after weeks of looking on craigslist. Then I came across a listing for a drafting table. I loved the base of the drafting table. The seller was only asking $50, I think, so we bought it. How easy would it be to take the existing table top off and put new boards on?!? Totally easy!!

I didn't take pictures of the whole process because it was pretty simple to do and anyone that is handy with a sander and saw could do this.

First, a look at the table before. This is the picture from the craigslist ad.



Matt bought six 2 x 6 pieces of wood from Lowes. It took forever to find pieces that were straight and not warped. I went out to the garage and picked out the sides of the pieces I wanted to go on top and bottom. This would be easier to do if you had a jig to screw all the boards together. We didn't want to pay the crazy amount that a jig costs so Matt rigged up his own way of screwing the boards together. Don't ask me how though!!



Once the boards were screwed together Matt sanded down all the edges and corners and on top of the boards. I didn't want the pointy edges because that is just a bunch of stitches waiting to happen! Plus, I wanted a softer look.

Matt reused the original support board on the bottom of the table. It was not long enough to go all the way across the table so he also added another support piece. By reusing the original support piece Matt did not have to cut a new piece and then chisel out a space for the semi-circle metal pieces to go.



Most tables sit around 30 inches high and this table was around 32 inches high. Matt trimmed off 2 inches from the verticle piece so that it would be sitting at 30 inches.



After the new top was back on the base I then stained everything Dark Walnut. I put 2 coats of stain on the table. I then put 2 coats of Polycrylic on to protect the table.







And the final product...



Linking up to:
House of Hepworths
The Shabby Creek Cottage
Cheap Crafty Mama
Someday Crafts
Savvy Southern Style
The Taylor House
The DIY Showoff
Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

A Christmas Vignette

When I bought my buffet off craigslist last year not only did I want it for more storage but I already envisioned a beautiful Christmas display on it. Since I wasn't finished with the buffet in time for Christmas last year I have been collecting items for this year.

I can't stop staring at it. It sparkles at night when the tree is on. When I walk by it during the day I can't help but smile! What can I say...sparkles make me happy!

You can click on each picture to see closer.


The green tree and presents are from Walmart and I paid $.50 each on the after Christmas clearance last year. These are ornaments and I just cut off the strings. Walmart has a huge selection of cheap and sparkly ornaments in several colors. The balls were clearance as well. I paid $5.00 total for 2 boxes of green and brown balls. The silver star was a miniature tree topper that I already had that I spray painted silver.


This is a look at the other side of the buffet. There is another Walmart $.50 tree and a silver snow flake I spray painted. The glass cover I found at Goodwill (of course) earlier this year for $3. The gold tree in the back I made. A tutorial for that will come soon.



I love the wine decanter that I found for $1 at...you guessed it...Goodwill! I put a strand of green beaded garland in there. Simple!



This is the whole buffet. I'm in love! This is exactly how I wanted everything to look. I love the green, gold, silver and brown all together.

Have a great weekend!

Linking up here:
Christina's Adventures
Just a Girl
Chic on a Shoestring Decorating
Remodelaholic

Mirror, mirror on the wall

I really don't like it when projects don't go my way. I get these ideas in my head and I convince my husband that they are going to be soooo easy. And then something happens and the easy project turns to frustration, frustration to anger, anger to me walking away from it for 6 months. Ok...maybe not that long!

I wanted to have a big chunky mirror on my buffet in our dining room. I had a vision of how it was going to look. It was supposed to be easy. We had a huge mirror that we took out of our master bathroom and had stored in the garage. I wanted that mirror cut down to 2 ft x 3 ft. Easy enough right?? Wrong!! Let's just say cutting a mirror yourself without practice doesn't work that well. We had to find another mirror at the ReStore.

To spare you all the frustrating details here's how we finally got our mirror to work. We glued the mirror down to a piece of underlayment from Home Depot. We had Home Depot cut the piece down to the size I wanted.



Because the mirror from the ReStore was just a tad bit bigger than my original size we had to glue the frame on to the mirror itself. My original plan was to glue the frame to the underlayment and if you do that it will work so much easier. More on that in a bit.

So after gluing the frame to the mirror we had to hang it. I wanted the mirror to be angled and not just hanging there on the wall. I used picture hanging wire (Is that the technical name?) and picture hooks to get this monster up. Because the underlayment was so thin we didn't want the screws holding the hooks to go through to the mirror so we used another small piece of wood to hold the hooks. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does.

In the original plan the mirror was just going to rest on the buffet and the picture hooks and wire were not going to be needed. This mirror weighs a ton and when the frame was glued to it all the weight was resting on the frame. That would cause the frame to come unglued from the mirror. So we had to come up with plan B. And this worked. Now all the weight is on the screws in the wall that are in studs.

Here it is all pretty and finished.

I love it!

The longest project EVER!!

So I had an idea on how to get more storage in our house. This idea started in October of last year. I looked on craigslist and after a few weeks of looking I found what I wanted.

I wanted to put a buffet in the dining room that would hold toys and other things that really didn't have a home. I found a buffet that was a great deal and it was still available. So Matt went and picked it up and brought it home. It was a big ol' thang...solid wood too! She had curves and sexy legs! Look at em'!

I knew I wanted to refinish the buffet and I thought it would be an easy task. I figured it would only take me a few weekends to complete. WRONG!! It got cold really fast here in Texas. Before it got reeeaaaallllyyy cold here I was able to sand the top down to the bare wood. So there it sat in our garage. Day after day after day after day. If there happened to be a decent day I would work on the buffet but pretty much I let her sit.

Let's face it. Paint doesn't work well in cold temps and I wasn't about to go out and paint in the freezing cold garage. So now that it's warmer here I got to work. Plus, my husband pretty much demanded he be able to park in the garage again before summer or else.

I've been workin' my bootay off for the past 3 weeks to get this thing done. I'm just such a perfectionist that if there is a single thing wrong I must start over...MUST!! But nonetheless, she is all done. Finally!! Here she is in all her glory!

A few more pictures because I love her so much.

Look at that beautiful wood! Gorgeous!

I put this beautiful shelf paper in all the drawers and on the shelves. My heart goes pitter patter when I open the drawers.

I want to curl up beside her and sleep. Ok that's weird! But you get the point. The one thing that I must fix is the door that won't close. This buffet is over 50 years old and the wood is warped. So I have to figure out how to get it to close.

I can honestly say I did this 100% by myself. This is my baby! It might have taken me 6 months to complete but she's all done. I am on the lookout for the perfect lamps to put beside the candles. Also, I will be adding a mirror behind the plant. So imagine the lamps and a mirror there too. On to the next project now.

Colors: Top is Minwax Dark Walnut
Bottom half is Valspar Swiss Coffee from Lowe's
Shelf paper from Target

Major project fail!!...Sort of

For Christmas my parents gave me a $25 gift card to Hobby Lobby. Of course I spent it right away. I found in the clearance section this lovely bowl.

I knew right away what I was going to do with it and how I was going to transform this ugly thing into something pretty. So shortly after Christmas I started to prime it. Then it got really cold here. REALLY COLD!! There was no way I was going to go spray paint in the garage until Spring.

Well hopefully Spring is here in Texas so I went to the garage this weekend with the intention of finishing up this bad boy and then it happened.

My heart stopped. Before I looked down I took a deep breath and hoped for the best. So I looked down and there were six huge pieces of broken glass. My pants leg had caught the edge of the bowl and tipped it over on the piece of wood it was sitting on. So I ran inside and grabbed my Krazy Glue and started working. The picture above is all six pieces glued back together. I didn't take a picture but you could obviously see the cracks everywhere on the outside of the bowl.

Then I had an idea for this b/c I spent $11 on this thing and I wasn't going to throw it out just yet. I had a glimmer of hope. I grabbed my wood putty and started putting that over the cracks. Yet again I didn't take a picture b/c this is all happening really fast and my heart is racing and there was no time for in between pictures!! No time people!!

After a few hours of letting the wood putty dry I sanded the putty down and started to prime the bowl again...crossing my fingers and toes this would work. Take a look now!

The arrows are pointing to some of the cracks. You can hardly even tell. This is with only 1 coat of primer too! Once I do another coat of primer and another coat of glossy you will not see the cracks. I don't care what the inside of the bowl looks like b/c when I put stuff in this bowl you won't even see the inside.

Wood putty isn't just for wood! This is going to work! So before you throw something out that has a crack in it, grab your wood putty and try to cover it up. If the wood putty didn't work I was also going to try some spackle for covering nail holes.

Whew! I can breathe again!

Sorry for the cell phone pics. That was another project fail this weekend. I dropped my digital camera for a second time and broke it too. It was an awesome weekend!