The sad, sad little coffee table

Once upon a time, there was a sad, sad little coffee table with a broken knob sitting in the back of a going-out-of-business furniture warehouse on the side of the highway. It was all alone, collecting dust with a $100 price tag (what?). And it was orange and ugly, but wait… solid wood… nice lines. I like the plank style of the top. And the turned legs. Hm. “Would you take $20 for it?” (It didn’t hurt that I was also buying $600 worth of couches.)

Truth be told, I didn’t know what to do with it. But I had heard about this new “glazing” technique that everybloggy’s talking about, so I thought I’d give that a try…

(Forgive me for not documenting the journey, but it wouldn’t have helped much!)

I roughed it up with some sandpaper, and painted it with some white interior paint I already had. The glazing technique I got from here. I decided I wanted BLACK, but after mixing in the glaze, it was grey. Ok, that’s fine.

I tried to follow her instructions, but when I wiped the “excess” off… all of it came off. So I ended up just leaving it on there, just the way the brush laid it. The glaze was pretty easy to “massage” until I got it the way I wanted. And if I didn’t like it, I just wiped it off and started fresh. It was pretty easy (and VERY forgiving!).

When it dried, I finished with some wipe-on poly and added some lil black knobs, and viola! $20 coffee table, meet the inside of my house.

I like the way the glaze accentuates the crevices. (Crevices is fun to say, I’m going to use it more.)