How to Paint a Dining Room Table

Hey kids, as you can probably tell from the title, this post is about painting a dining room table. Because I'm crazy like that.

 

 

I'm not talking about slapping on a coat of paint and calling it good. I'm talking about durability. About kid-friendly. About withstanding milk spills and spaghetti night. About not worrying whether or not the tabletop is going to survive its next Kids' Craft Hour.

 

If you get what I'm saying, nod your head.

If you're nodding your head, read on...

 

I've been wanting to swap our current counter-height dining set for a standard table height for some time now, just because our dining room space is so small. I felt like everything was disproportionate.

 

Fortuitously enough, we looted a dining table and four chairs from an unsuspecting and sweet neighbor who's moving. (By "looted," I mean we hauled away her table while she practically did a happy dance because it meant she wouldn't have to move it anywhere herself.)

 

 

It's in decent shape but not great. Hey, it was free - no complaints here.

 

 

I love wood, don't get me wrong, but as you can see from the photos above, this particular table is (a) not real wood, and (b) possessing a wood tone that is too dark for our small dining room. We needed a little more light-n-bright. Stat.

 

 

The chairs are in good condition, but not exactly what I'm after. That's another project for another day. Soon.

 

 

There are a million and three ways to paint a dining table (believe me, I've scoured the interwebs and have taken copious notes), but this is the way I went about it. If you're looking to embark on a similar project yourself, feel free to add my humble account here into your mix of research.

 

(Continue reading after the jump.)

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Ikea LACK Table into Padded Bench

Do you have a LACK table from Ikea? If so, may I humbly recommend giving its mass-produced-ness a quick & easy makeover? Padded & upholstered & fabulous.

 

 

And the good news is: you don't have to have reupholstery experience to do this. Seriously. Anyone can do this!

 

 

Start by removing the legs from your table.

 

 

Cut whatever you're using for your padding. I used high density foam, about 2" thick.

 

 

Layer on the floor these things in this order: batting (you want about 6" larger than your foam on all sides), foam, and upside-down table top.

 

 

Pull up and staple your batting to hold everything in place and smooth out the edges. Don't worry about getting it too taut - that's what you'll do with the fabric.Staple all the edges and the corners down, keeping things as smooth as possible.

 

 

Lay your fabric down (right side down against the floor) and then your freshly padded top (top side down) on it. Fabric should be about 6" larger on all sides as well. Begin stapling as shown below.

 

 

One of the most important things to remember about upholstery is to pull very taut. You want your fabric super smooth. In fact, while stapling mine, I knelt on top of the table (to smoosh down the padding) as I stapled...and I still pulled the fabric very taut before stapling.

 

 

After stapling the edges, fold your corners neatly so there is no bunching or gathering. Staple in place. Trim all excess fabric, because you'll be screwing the legs back in. Mine had a ton of fabric here, so I cut it as close to the staples as I dared and hoped for the best.

 

Now onto the legs. You upholstery purists are probably going to die, but I totally blatantly left visible staples on my legs. My table is going against a wall, and since the legs will all be turned so staples are facing the wall, it will not be noticeable.

 

 

If you feel uncomfortable doing it this way, by all means bust out your nailhead trim and go to town. I did add a dab of hot glue to the tops of my legs to hold the fabric in place (because the fabric at the top of the legs did not overhang. I wanted as little excess fabric there as possible.), and when I screwed the legs on I made sure all the stapled edges were facing the back.

 

 

Fabric used: Mill Creek Beau Geste 100% Cotton Upholstery Fabric in Praline from here. I love this table-turned padded bench now. Like, so so much.

 

 

p.s. I use and recommend this spray adhesive:

 

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Christmas Tree Centerpiece (a la J. Crew)

So, I doubt you'll remember, but my friend and I were in charge of decorating for a large Christmas dinner. (Original inspiration board here, although we veered from that.)

 

Our budget was verrrrry small. It's not easy to decorate a gym (at all, let alone) on a very small budget. So, inspired by J. Crew's crew cuts catalogue, we went total handmade-vintagey. We're talking cardboard trees and tissue poms and glitter here, friends.

 

And I couldn't love the results more.

 

Here's what we did:

 

Start by collecting some cardboard. We found ours outside a Sears store near the dumpster. (First we double-checked with the guys inside that it was okay if we stole it. They quickly gave us the thumbs-up.)

 

We determined tree sizes (super narrow and tall but not so tall that you couldn't see the people across the table at dinner). I think we went with 20", 16", and 12" heights, and maybe 6", 5", and 4" base widths. Ish. Scored and then cut the triangles in this cut-effective way, where one cut worked toward two triangles:

 

(Because, really, raise your hand if you could live a long happy life without ever cutting out cardboard. Mine's raised, for sure. And I'm even typing, so that's not easy...)

 

You'll end up with lots of pieces like this:

 

Take half of the triangles and cut cardboard-width slits into the top half. Take the other half of the triangles and make slits into the bottom half (shown below):

 

(The slits will be where the two triangles slide into each other to create a free-standing 3D tree.)

 

Lay out all triangles to prepare for spray painting.

Spray onto 2-3 trees at a time (I used Krylon gold metallic), then quickly drizzle gold glitter onto the wet paint so it sticks.

 

Let them dry, then flip them over and repeat on the other side.

 

Some of the glitter will fall off (as we all know glitter is wont to do), but most of it should stick if you're careful in handling them and if you got the glitter onto the paint while it was still wet.

 

Assemble the trees. Looking kinda cute in their little forest-y setup.

 

Cut about an inch off the tops of the trees so they're flat. Use hot glue to attach little pom-pom tissue paper balls as "stars." (Check pinterest or google on how to make these.)

 

We did three per table, one of each size. Love love love them. The photos don't do their cuteness justice. We used real pine boughs and fake candles (votives) for ambiance, and I love how the light flickers off the glitter.

 

Here's a "daylight" shot. Not as magical, I know.

 

There you go. Budget-friendly, pretty easy, and super cute holiday centerpiece idea.

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How to Paint a Harlequin Diamond

 

What do you get when you cross a timeless harlequin diamond pattern...

source



...with the vibe of 1920s mens swimwear?

source

 

The newest addition to my vintage (read: thrifted, dirt cheap) furniture collection.

 



I know it's not exactly super trendy or fashionable right now, but I've been in love with harlequin diamonds for many moons. (Yep. Moons. Many.) And I've been NOT in love with the color of this mid-century-modern table for quite a while as well.



I thought I'd take a stab at painting harlequins. Tougher than one might think, especially if you want to get it done in one fell swoop like me (rather than wait for paint to dry before re-taping and re-painting a bunch of times).

 

So. I cleaned the table and eyeballed the size of diamond. I wanted irony and whimsy here (translation: oversized), what with the random mix of styles and time periods and colors and patterns. Started taping out the bottom part of the first two diamonds.

 

(This table actually made recreating the pattern fairly easy, as I was able to follow the grooves.)

 

To avoid having to re-tape and re-paint, I simply cut the tape to the exact size on all diamonds from the get-go.

Using a right-angle was key for horizontally lining up the diamond corners. Also, it was important throughout this taping process to keep in mind inside-of-diamond versus outside-of-diamond. Sometimes I started going, and what "should" have been the outside edge of the tape actually was the inside edge of the diamond, so just keep checking yourself.

(This is making no sense, is it. Sighhh...)

 

I measured the height of first (bottom) half of the diamond (mine was 6.75"), then measured that length again for what would be the top half of the diamond (total diamond height = 13.5"). I laid the right-angle down at the 13.5" mark.

 

Taped from the side angle/corner up to the center point at the right-angle height.

 

It took me a while to figure out where and when to cut tape. Fortunately for my sanity, I had an adorable cheering section.

 

Like I said, keep in mind inner- and outer-edges. The tape is a little like an optical illusion. Basically, the overall aim was to tape one diamond at a time and then trim the tape where necessary to be able to paint neighboring diamonds.

 

Done taping. Phew and phew. (I did medium-width horizontal stripes on the upper table sides to maintain a pattern but keep it less busy overall than what a perpendicular harlequin diamond would have been.)

 

Next up: paint. This was pretty easy. I used some leftover from this project. Make sure you maintain clean paint edges. (Tips for how to paint a crisp line here.)

 

Peel off the tape, let paint dry. If you want a crisp, clean harlequin pattern, I'd go ahead and wipe on some polyurethane (or sealant of your choice) and call it good. As for me, I wanted a vintage 1920s circus-meets-ocean-front vibe. I wanted age. And a false sense of history.

 

Break out the electric sander and go to town.

 

Wash all surfaces of sawdust, then seal with wipe-on poly.

Now it sits at the corners of the two ugly yet ridiculously comfy sofas in our basement FamCave. I couldn't love the thing more. So unique!

 

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How to Wrap a Box (without making it look like you wrapped a box)

My husband was out of town last week. I found myself staying up way too late every night, clinging to the warm glow of HGTV eminating from our tv. I may or may not have downed an entire sack of dried bananas one night (helloooo, 240% of my daily saturated fat).

 

But one productive thing I did do was add a little color to my entry table, via a wrapping paper-covered old cell phone box. And while a tutorial on such things is probably a bit overkill, I have nothing to say 'cept: look at my dried banana consumption. Overkill is how I roll.

 

Here's how I did it:

Step 1: Get box. The color is so bright, it would show through just a single sheet of wrapping paper. So I wrapped the lid with a plain sheet of white paper first.

 

 

Step 2: Using some kind of spray adhesive (LOVE this stuff)...

 

...lightly spray the middle of the paper. Set box lid on this area and smooth it out. Then lightly spray the first long side (clear to the edge of the paper). Don't overdo the spray adhesive; that stuff is powerful, and this is just paper. A little spritz will do just fine.

 

Step 3: Fold the first long edge up, and smooth it out. Repeat on opposide long edge.

 

Step 4: You really want both layers of paper to be smooth and taut, so make sure everything is smooth before you move on. Then cut slits for the excess paper foldover.

 

Step 5: I didn't want the box to look like someone came and dropped off a present on my entry table (although, don't get me wrong, I loooove presents dropped off anywhere), so I opted to keep edges streamlined and cut every bit of excess paper off. This includes the four squares at the corners. 

 

Step 6: Spray adhesive onto the last two sides (the short edges), and repeat steps 2-4. Your base layer of white paper should be done, and your box should look smooth.

 

Step 7: Choose your wrapping (or scrapbook...or any other kind of) paper for the outer layer. This time, use the spray adhesive to do the top (or bottom, in the photo below) and all four sides at the same time. Fold each edge up, smooth it with your fingers, and then crease each corner to make a kind of triangle at each corner.

 

Step 8: Carefully and as closely to the box as possible (I even turned my scissors so the blade of the bottom scissor-part was directly next to the box corner), cut each corner exactly on the four corner folds.

 

Step 9: Fold over all the edges, smooth them down. (You could cover the whole thing with ModPodge here, but I didn't. I had dried bananas to eat, people.) You're done! Unless you wanted to move onto step 10...

 

...Step 10: Use Sharpies and a ruler to draw stripes onto a piece of white cardstock (Sharpie Art! yesss.), then wrap aNOTHer box in that cardstock following this tutorial. Just because stripes are an awesome graphic.

 

 Welp, there you go. Cheapest project ever. I like how the wrapping paper print ties in with the botanicals, and the b&w stripes tie in with the lines of, well, everything.

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