Simply Beautiful By Angela

creating simple beauty on a budget

Faux Card Catalog Coffee Table

Hello everyone and happy Friday eve!  For the first time ever I actually have two posts up in one day–super exciting! AND kind of weird…
Today is both the monthly Thrift Store Décor Upcyle Challenge and it’s also the 4 week update for the One Room Challenge!  So for this first post let’s talk about my most recent furniture makeover that I chose to feature for this month’s challenge. Then you can hop over here to check out the progress made on the living room makeover.  Sound good?  Okay let’s get to it!
Thrift Store Decor Upcycle Challenge


The Rules:

  • Upcycle an item(s) from a thrift store, resale store, or garage sale into a new piece of decor.
  • There’s no monthly theme.
  • There’s no budget to stick to.

Meet the Hosts


Make sure you follow our board on Pinterest for more upcycled decor inspiration!

For several years now I’ve wanted a new coffee table.  Our current one was just a cheap IKEA one and even though I dressed it up a little by planking the top I still wasn’t totally happy with it.  What I really wanted was something chunkier with drawers that I could turn into a faux card catalog.

I searched the thrift store each time I went in and I also searched the posts on Craigslist on a regular basis, but I wasn’t having any luck.  Don’t you hate when you have something super specific in mind and you just can’t find it anywhere?  The ones with drawers were at least 4 feet long (which is WAY too big for our space) and the smaller ones were just legs with no drawers.

But alas, my patience paid off because I finally stumbled upon this guy.

It was perfect and exactly what I had been searching for!  I noticed that it was posted over a month ago so I didn’t have very high hopes when I sent an inquiry about it. But much to my happy surprise, the seller still had it!

This thing is super solid.  You seriously can’t find furniture like this anymore, at least not for $45! It was perfect for what I had in mind and I was so excited to get started on it.

Supplies Used: (Affiliate links may be provided for convenience.  For more info, see my full disclosure here.) 

It’s made out of pine but the previous owner had treated it with some oil which gave it sort of an orange hue that I knew wasn’t going to work for with what I had in mind.  So the first thing that I did after wiping it down with Simple Green and giving it a quick sand with my orbital sander was stain it with Minwax Stain in Jacobean.

I also added a quick coat of my favorite budget friendly chalk paint (found at Walmart) in the color Truffle.

Notice that I didn’t need to stain or paint the fronts of the drawers because I was adding faux drawers.

To create the faux drawers I cut down some scrap 1/4″ underlayment into 11″ x 6″ pieces and attached them to the front of the existing drawers with liquid nails.

I wasn’t sure if the liquid nails would be a good enough hold since the boys will probably be pulling these drawers open frequently so I also put a small nail in each corner and filled the nail hole with wood filler.

Once the wood filler dried I sanded it down and stained the faux drawers.  Pretty crazy how differently the stain took to the underlayment wood versus the pine! Luckily this wasn’t a biggie and you can’t really tell on the finished product.

I gave the entire thing two coats of white chalk paint in the color Snow White.  The 16 oz bottle would probably been enough but since I used some of it on the fireplace I ended up running out before I got to the drawers so I had to pick up one more bottle.

 Luckily I can never have too much of this stuff on hand, it’s seriously amazing and will probably be used on something else before the year is up!

Once it was dry I took some 80 grit sandpaper to smooth and distress it.  I wanted a really worn and chippy look so I focused a lot on the edges.
Parts of the table had dings which was perfect since I wanted it to feel aged. I paid special attention to those spots while I was distressing and I love how they turned out.

Super cool, right?

Once I was happy with the distressing it was time to seal it with wax.  I didn’t take a picture of the this step because I had a minor freak out about it!  Let me tell you all about THAT…

Since I love the Waverly Inspirations chalk paint so much I decided to try out their wax.  Even though the bottle describes it as a “clear wax” I noticed that it looked yellow inside the bottle.  I hesitated when I saw this, but silly me decided to try it anyways.  Not my best idea.

It looked pretty clear while I was brushing it on but the next morning I was horrified to see that it had indeed dried yellow!  Luckily it doesn’t fully cure for 24 hours and it had only been 12 hours, so I was able to buff most of it pretty well and it looks okay now.  But you guys, it took me a really long time to buff it out so I don’t think I will be using it again.

After attaching my pulls, corner braces and caster wheels that I had spraypainted in Rust-Oleum Oil Rubbed Bronze Spray Paint this is how it turned out!

I adore how the paint just melted off in all the right spots.  This piece truly does look like it’s been around for ages which is exactly what I wanted.

I purchased the pulls at Hobby Lobby while they were 50% off so they only cost $2.50 each! 

It’s hard to see the caster wheels since they kind of sunk into our new Safavieh Hudson Shag Rug (that I am absolutely obsessed with) but they add the perfect height and make moving his heavy beast a breeze.  Also–BIG NOTE HERE!  I coated them with Acrylic Spray after I painted them so that the paint wouldn’t rub off on our rug.

It couldn’t have turned out any more perfect in my opinion and it was well worth the long wait!
And now for more thrifty goodness!

Check out what my fellow upcyclers created below!

Linking up to these awesome parties!

Comments

  9. Fabulous makeover! I like every single detail you added. You are correct, you cannot buy furniture like this anymore. Your patience paid off big time for you. It looks very expensive now! Great job!

  10. The coffee table looks wonderful. What a great buy you got because if you buy brand new it is so cheaply made. You did a fantastic job making your vision into a reality.

  12. Oh my goodness. I was a little skeptical when I saw the "before" picture. I remember when that "This End Up" style of furniture was all the rage! The good thing is that it was very well made. . . and your transformation made it beautiful! Well done!!

    Thanks so much for joining the Grace at Home party at Imparting Grace. I'm featuring you this week!