Coffee Table Revamp

Matt and I haven't had a coffee table since he first lived with Jess back in Ypsi. We originally had our eye on a pretty cool table from Ikea, but we were reluctant to buy it because, well, we are kinda cheap sometimes, and it just seemed like a lot of money every time we looked at it.

One day this past Spring we went out thrift store shopping for a new little dining table for our new little apartment. We wanted an older wood table, and we were willing to do the revamp to get a good solid piece.

Our first stop was the Ann Arbor Recycle ReUse Center. We didn't have any luck finding a table we liked, but we spotted a coffee table that spoke to us. We snatched it up, and started working on it as soon as we got home (we were just a little excited...).

Here's the before:

As you can see, someone let this table become a kiddie play/craft table. It was covered in kids paint and chalk. The picture from underneath shows a little better what the color the table originally was.

Here's some of Matt hard at work sanding it down. It had been redone at some point before. When Matt was sanding the top it was so thin on the edges he had to be careful not to go down through it.

Now for the fun part...the AFTER photos! All we did to finish it was pick out a stain color we liked, and I stained it in the garage for a couple of days. Then I put on a layer of polyurethane to protect it a little, and we were done!

Here's the basics of how the costs for this project broke down:

$20 Coffee table (ReUse Center)

$9 Stain for coffee table (Home Depot Gift Card)
$10 Polyurethane (Home Depot Gift Card)

In total, this great wood coffee table only cost us about $40. And - it was fun to work on!