Coffee Table Re-do

The coffee table in our living has been looking a hot mess for quite some time. I talked about getting a new one or refinishing it for months. It's actually possible that it was even longer than that. We purchased the table at Pier 1 right after we got married and really it's held up pretty well. We're not real gentle with our furniture and eat on that table surface almost everyday. No coasters under drinks and using Clorox wipes to clean it off (whoopsie!) led to a table top surface was chipping and ugly. At first it was just a few little nicks that I could fill in with a furniture repair marker but after awhile the nicks got so large that it looked like our table top was completely colored with marker! Haha!


See? Not pretty. I finally got up the gumption to tackle the sucker. I even sanded it myself (which is pretty much a miracle)! I don't want to go into all the nitty, gritty details of how I did the refinishing since I've talked about it a few times before with the dresser and nightstands. It was just a basic process of sand, prime, paint, and poly. Here's some photos of the process (in order): primed, one paint coat, second paint coat.

I let poly coat dry outside for a few days. I could've brought it back in the house sooner than that I'm sure but I wanted to keep everything off the table and the easiest way to do that was keep it in the garage. Plus, we've been having fun sitting on the floor and eating dinner in front of the TV. I don't know why that's fun but it is. I'll also mention that I only did one coat of poly. I didn't want the table to be super shiny but if I notice that it's getting scratched up then I'll probably add another coat.

A few more little tidbits about the project - it was completely FREE! All the materials I used I already had on hand at home which was a lovely little bonus. The second tidbit is that I was originally planning to use a crackle craft paint along the inner edge of the table. There are some "stone" looking pieces there and I wanted to keep them looking stone like. Once I got the black paint on the though I felt like a creamy, stony stripe might look a little like an 80's flashback so I bagged that idea.

I'm loving the "new" coffee table in the living room. It looks so much nicer and cleaner just because the top isn't all scuffed up. Plus, I can use my DIY coasters to protect the table from yuckiness again. :)




Anyone else been refinishing furniture? Or eating dinner on the floor? :) Let me know in the comments below (hey! That rhymes!).