Striped Coffee Table

During the last few months I’ve been painting most of our old furniture and I think this piece may just be one of my new favorites! Check out my inspirational, striped coffee table and read on!

Last week I showed you the makeover of our very old TV stand. Actually, it used to be my boyfriend’s old TV stand, but now we live together we decided it is ‘our’ furniture :). Besides, once I made the DIY multimedia unit ánd we lacked storage space, we re-purposed our lavender grey TV stand into another cute cabinet to store stuff out of sight and organizing our home :).

The old TV stand came along with this damaged and weathered coffee table:

I’ve used it to put painting projects on it during the last couple of months, so it gained some paint marks as well. Which didn’t matter of course, for I was planning to re-paint it anyway. And now I finally did.

We discussed it first and decided to combine our ‘wishes’ for the makeover. Usually I just go ahead and make stuff, and he usually likes the final result. I tend to think it is always more fun to have some input from others so I am glad now we have something we both thought about and we both love.

I wanted it to sort-of match with the lavender grey cabinet, try adding some stripes as well and add some text. We together picked an ‘inspirational’ quote: one that has special meaning to my boyfriend. From a Bob Marley song.

As always, I started by taking apart the table. Then I sanded the pieces and applied one layer of primer.

The next day I painted every piece of the table with two layers of matte, grey paint. This time I didn’t make my own matte paint, but just bought a matte version instead because it will be more durable: it’s a table and we will put stuff on it. You don’t want your cups to leave marks 🙂

I wanted to paint white stripes on the grey background, so I marked the stripes using a tape-measure. The thing with painting perfect stripes is to make sure that the tape is pressed down very well!! Also, remove the tape while the paint is still a bit wet: take off the tape slowly while the paint is still a bit elastic but will still stick to the surface, and it will leave a perfectly straight line.

Here’s little trick I’ve learned from experience: don’t try and save money by buying cheap painting tape. I ran out of tape so had to use my spare, cheap tape on one of the stripes instead and I could tell right away! I had to repaint these stripes, because the paint got underneath the tape the first attempt…

Once the paint had dried completely (the next day), I entered my quote in a word file and changed the font until I was satisfied with the look of it. With my computer screen in sight I drew the letters on the table with a black marker (sharpie) and started painting over the lines by hand, using a tiny brush and black paint. After a few touch-ups on the letters and enough time for the paint to dry (24 hours), I removed the remaining marker with some rubbing alcohol.

And there it is, our new coffee table!

At first I was planning on painting the wicker baskets in white, but I kind of liked this look as well so decided to leave it like this.

I just love how it turned out, so I’m happy again 🙂

What do you think?