This is the Pinterest Challenge project that I’m most excited about. It also took substantially longer to complete than my frames so I’m calling it a labor of love. I had bought a cheap-o white side table from Target for $14.99 with the intention of jazzing it up somehow.
Pretty blah right? I love the look of nailhead trim so I knew I wanted to do that, but I also wanted to do something with the top. I thought about adding wallpaper, or maybe painting some kind of flower stencil. Then out of the blue, it hit me: Chevron! Chevron is huge right now and I thought this would be a fun and cheap way to bring it into my house. I did a search on Pinterest for a DIY chevron table and found this beauty from House to Your Home:
So pretty! That was all the confirmation I needed to know that chevron was the way to go.
Here’s how I went about chevroning (that can be a word right?) my table. I starting by dividing the table into thirds. The table is 18 inches wide by 18 inches long, so 1/3 is 6 inches. I used a pencil to mark a straight line down the table at 6 inches and 12 inches. Then I split each of the three sections into two, so I ended up with 5 lines down my table.
The next step was to mark every two inches on each edge and line. I then used my ruler to help my mark a straight line from the bottom left corner to the two inch mark on the middle line, and the back down to the bottom edge again. I continued that through each of my original three sections. This gave me my chevron pattern.
I wrote a “G” on every other section vertically to make sure I didn’t confuse myself while I was taping (a very smart idea because even with the G I still messed up once or twice). I taped off the sections I wanted to remain white as well as the edges of the table. This part took a while, but I had Harry Potter on in the background and Leo was hanging out with me so it wasn’t so bad.
One tip here: I used a credit card to smooth down all the edges of my tape. I think this was extremely helpful in getting the chevron lines nice and crisp once the tape came off. I would also recommend erasing your pencil marks now. I did not do this and if you look closely you can see some of the marks through the gold paint.
The next step was to paint! I used the same yellow gold acrylic paint by Martha Stewart that I used on my frames. It took four coats to get the coverage I wanted, and if I were to do this again, I would try a different type of paint. But this was cheap and it ended up working just fine. After I was happy with how the paint looked I let the paint dry for about an hour and then peeled up my tape. Make sure to do this very carefully so as not to pull the paint off the table. It’s looking good at this point!
I then used a good eraser to erase all of my pencil marks. It’s important to use a good eraser so you don’t leave smudge marks all over the white parts of the table. We’re getting close now! Once the table was free of pencil marks I wiped the table off well with a clean rag to make sure I didn’t have any eraser particles left and then I took it down to my basement to spray it with some clear polyurethane.
I sprayed one coat all over the whole table and two additional coats over the top. I wanted to make sure my hard work would be protected! And that’s it for the chevron part! Here’s how it looks.
Yay! So pretty! But I’m not done yet. I still wanted to add the nailhead trim around the edges, like in this picture from Space Says
She used 1200 thumbtacks and spent 10 hours on the project. I knew I would go crazy trying to do that, so I decided to just do one row around the top. Easy right? Ha…ha…ha. No sir. It involved a lot measuring and a lot of patience.
After about an hour and a half this is how far I got.
Yeah, that’s just one of the four sides. I gave up at this point not only because of time, but because this happened:
The table cracked! Huge huge bummer. I felt like crying at this point. So that’s where my beautiful table stands now. I need your help figuring out what I should do. Here are my options:
- Suck it up and finish the whole damn table.
- Finish this one side and leave it at that.
- Take out all the nail heads and fill the holes and the crack, then repaint that part of the table white.
- Take out the nail heads and then add a different type of decorative trim.
The table looks awesome, Emmie! Bummer about the nail incident.
ReplyDeleteMost of the options you listed seemingly would take freaking forever. I think taking the nailheads out and doing a decorative trim would be awesome. You could go get scrapbook paper at HL and mod podge it on, or in the home decor aisles there they have a lot of cool trims that come on spools. Something like that could work really well and all it would take is some hot glue & cute trim! :)
That's my two-cents.
Hey..table looks great! If you go to a craft store (Michaels/Joanns) you can find nailhead trim strips. I used them for a bulletin board in my classroom and it saves sooo much time! The nails are in place and every 5 nails you hammer one in.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Nail-Strip-ft-long/dp/B001FTMO3Q/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_0
Hope that helps...I think you should def keep the trim!
It's not super obvious from far away...so it wouldn't be bad to finish this side and leave it at that. I'd be too worried it would crack more to try and do the other sides. But then you'd have to live with just one side completed.... I just don't know Emmithy! Good luck!
ReplyDelete