When we moved last month, we wound up buying quite a bit of furniture. We're in a bigger place now so it was necessary. We ordered 10 pieces from IKEA and built it all ourselves. It was relatively well priced and just a little time consuming to put together. There are a couple of pieces/things that we held off buying. We decided to wait for a bit on non essential pieces. We also wanted to see if there was anything we'd be able to make for ourselves.
What we did do was try to salvage some of our old furniture to be used here. We kept our bed frame, old kitchen table (which now houses our herb garden!), Baros' giant desk, a small coffee table and a couple of other small furniture pieces.
For some of our bigger pieces, they were either too broken or too big to fit into the space here so we tossed what we had to and took apart some of the rest so we could upcycle the pieces.
For example, we had two dark brown dressers in our old apartment (I never thought to take pictures of them intact). They were pretty cheap when we bought them 3 years ago and the drawers were pretty beat up (screws loose, thin boards bent etc.) But, the tops were still in great shape.
We disassembled the dressers and took the tops, all the screws, the backboards and the drawer rails. We had no idea what we would do with the pieces but figured that a plan would come to us.
Well, we still don't know what to do with the backboards and drawer rails but we came up with a plan for at least one of the dresser tops and the old screws.
We decided to do a little upcycle and turn the dresser top into an outdoor coffee table to put between our chairs on the deck. Oh man, it came out so very cool and I have to say it was pretty "easy" if a little time consuming. I took 3-4 days to complete. One of the coolest thing is that we really didn't spend very much money on this at all! We had a lot of supplies left over and we only had to buy the wood for the legs (so under $10).
The first step was to sand down the top and sides of the dresser. Unfortunately, the piece was not actually wood, but MDF with a very thin veneer covering it which means thatit wasn't waterproof. Since it's MDF, it definitely added some labor to our process. Baros spent a day sanding the top and peeling the veneer off the sides.
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| the sanded dresser top... but upside down |
After a little research we figured out how to "waterproof" the MDF. Baros dilluted some PVA glue with water and coated the top, sides and bottom. Then we primed and sanded again.
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| Coated with PVA Glue and primer |
We decided to paint the base black. We painted one coat and sanded again to make sure it was smooth. Then we added two more coats of black.
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| the first coat of black paint |
Then came the super fun part! We splatter painted the surface. Oh, man! It was so fun. We used some sponges and random acrylic paint that I already had from past projects. We started with some metallic blue, matte purple and plum and swirled it around. We did some finger painting and used toothbrushes (from Turkish Airlines) to create some light splatter. We swirled on some neons and splattered some white and glow in the dark paint. Then we let it dry.... and I went back in and did some more because I can't stop myself sometimes. I just felt like it needed some more in spots. And, let's be honest. I was just having too much fun.
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| First round of finger/splatter painting |
The last thing we needed to work on was the legs. We bought four 8 ft pieces of pine wood to create the legs (we're thinking of making a second table, and used 1 of the pieces to create a rack for our green screen). Each was 1.5 in by 1.5 in by 8 ft. We cut each leg to 2ft tall and then created 8 cross sections to support the table. We decided that the 4 legs themselves wouldn't be stable enough for such a heavy top so we created 2 long and 2 short supports for the top and the same for the bottom to really add some stability.
Once each piece was cut down to size, we sanded and stained each piece. Unfortunately, we only have a hand saw with a guide soooo not every piece was perfectly precise but we adjusted with some additional sanding (literally we sanded so much during this process!). One day, we'll have to invest in a miter saw to make our lives easier for any of these projects we may do.
We stained each piece and then sanded an extra round before staining one more time.
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| Staining each piece after sanding |
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| 1st coat of stain |
After letting the pieces dry we did 2 coats of the wipe on poly-urethane.
And then it was time to construct our piece.
This took soo much longer than I had been anticipating. I, for some silly reason, thought we could just put the pieces together and screw them together and it would be a piece of cake... Nothing is ever that easy. We had to use clamps and square up the pieces to make sure the legs were even and the cross sections were straight.
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| Putting together the first leg and cross |
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| Seeing how the legs sat in the bottom of the table |
It was a whole process. It also just took a lot of upper body strength since we used the screws from the old dresser. They required using the Allen key and quite a bit of force. And because we were squaring up pieces that were not fully straight and perhaps a few millimeters off, we wound up with one leg just a little shorter than the others. For now we're using a small piece of wood to even everything out, but eventually we're going to add adjustable feet to the legs so everything can be level.
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| Using Clamps to really get the legs together |
Once the legs were put together, Baros added them to the base and screwed them in using 3 L Brackets (we'll have to go get a 4th but we only had 3 on hand that were the right size).
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| It came together!! |
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| It's beautiful |
The final step was to fill the holes and level the legs with 3-d printed parts. Baros did some measurements and spent a few afternoons printing the pieces. So now our table should be completely waterproof and the feet make sure that the table won't wobble on the wooden slats of our deck!
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3-D printed feet and wood fillers
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It looks pretty cool and it's water proof now!
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We are so happy with how this table came out. It's been outside for a couple of weeks now (I'm super slow to upload things!) and it still looks beautiful. We spend a lot of time on the deck and it just adds to our comfort. It's the perfect height for eating off of and it's beautiful to look at! Could not be happier!
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| Enjoying our meal together |
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| Our first meal on our new table: Shrimp, peppers on grits with soppressata on the side. |
Our final upcycled table is beautiful and perfect for us! I'm in love with it and so is Baros! It was time consuming but such a great, cheap upcycle! I'm excited to see what else we can upcycle/create!
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| We're going to enjoy this table |
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