1.09.2013

It's like takin' a cabinet door from an estate sale


Estate sales. . .you either love um' or hate um'.  We hit one AWESOME one this spring that had treasure upon treasure.  Chuck scored the best garden tiller EVER for a mere $100.  I think it was from the early 70's but it runs like a champ and it is built like a brick "poop" house. . . if you catch my drift!  A few others we went to. . .um. . .not so nice!  I had to walk through Granny's 4000 piece doll collection just to get through the breezeway.  Yikes!

We always debate about stopping when we come upon a random sale.  We are not sale mappers/planners.  I can only count on one finger the times we tried to plan out a garage/estate sale day.  It's always a crap shoot.  Like I said. . .love or hate. . .it really just depends!   

So, it one of our "on a whim" stops, we encountered a little house that had pretty much been picked over.  We found an easy parking space on the street, right across from the house, so we decided to run in for a quick look!  Low and behold. . .we found this little gem for $5:



Someone had taken an old cabinet door, screwed legs to the bottom, put some laminate in the center, and called it a coffee table.  Well. . .since we just so happened to be in the market for a coffee table, and my husband and I saw the potential in it, we snatched it up.  My husband could hardly believe I didn't even try to haggle the price down.  Hey, $5 is $5. . .no reason to insult someone!

Sorry I didn't catch a pic of the table with the laminate still on.  it was so ugly, we couldn't wait to rip it off.  The picture above and below show the laminate off, and the table ready for sanding!






Look at those sexy feet and the sander in action!  As you can see, it was a bit warmer out when we were working on our little project!  Try to wear flip flops now and you will freeze your little piggys off!



We started by sanding down the edges of the table.  Although the wood looks like it was stained well, it was actually a poopy brown color.  Wow, I think I have referred to poo three times in this post already!  Once we started sanding the top, we found that the wood was actually oak!  The grain of the wood was beautiful!



We needed not sand the center (recessed) part of the wood since we were going to be covering it up, but we did need to make sure that all the previous glue / resin from the laminate was gone so our new veneer would sit flat!  Chuck took a little tool and cleaned out all the crevices!



We then stained the wood with some stain that we had in our stash in the barn.  I honestly can't tell you what color it was, but it was Minwax.  I'm thinking it was something like "Walnut" but please don't quote me on that!  Whatever it was, it was pretty dark and it made the grain of the wood "POP"!



About two years ago, we were given two huge boxes of real wood veneer by my Brother-in-law's Father (say that fast 10 times).  He has an awesome wood shop and knew that we dabbled in projects.  He figured we would totally put it to good use. . .and we have. . .Thanks Tim!  So we rolled it out to take a look at what we had to work with!





Next, we drug out a piece of luan that we had in the back of the barn and measured and marked the width of the recessed part of our table top that we wished to fill.  Since our veneer was very thin we were able to just fold and snap the pieces (to give the table more of natural look), and we began lining them up and laying them out!  This was the fun part!  It was sort of like working with a puzzle! 



Using contact cement and a roller, we adhered our veneer to our luan.





Once complete, we let our luan / veneer combo dry overnight!  Chuck then measured and marked the width again, since we covered up the original markings when we adhered the veneer.





After a quick run down the table saw on both sides, we set it on the table top to make sure the width fit.  We then measured and marked the length and ran the other two sides down the table saw.  Perfection!



Making another appearance was our contact cement!  We used the contact cement and roller to adhere the insert to our table top!  We then let the piece sit overnight, once again, to make sure the cement was set-up and dry.





Next up was to put a couple coats of polyurethane on the entire table top for protection.

Final step was to spray the legs black!  How I managed to take 7000 pictures of the table and none of the final step. . .the world may never know!



What I do know is how much we love love love our "new" $5 treasure!  And looky there. . .I didn't even have to refer to poo again!

1 comment:

  1. This turned out awesome!!!
    I happened over because of a comment you left on another blog about staining your exterior cedar with vinegar & steel wool.
    I've heard of & seen this stain method often, but never on exterior wood! And we really want to try it on the raw wood we just put on our home addition. I'm wondering, has it held up to the elements? Did you seal / weather proof over it?
    Much thanks for any help you might be able to give!

    ReplyDelete