Inexpensive Table Update

H’s parents moved to a different state last year leaving him in their house here in Florida and still have a bunch of furniture in it. They have told us we can pretty much have whatever we want that is left and they will just donate anything we don’t take. So they had one of those light wood, pretty cheap looking round pedestal tables with the drop down leaves. This past weekend we finally tackled that ugly table and saved it from the Salvation Army grave.
See ugly!
When painting wood furniture first you need to sand any sheen/gloss off so your primer and paint will stick. We used an orbital sander on the top and all the flat surfaces and some sandpaper in all the nooks and crannies.

We bought our supplies at Lowes: a cheap plastic drop cloth, 2 3” cut in brushes, a quart of primer, and a quart of paint. The choices in the paint and primer section are overwhelming we starred at them for a good 5 minutes before we walked up to the paint desk to ask for help. This is what the girl picked out for us. For the paint I just said I wanted a black semi gloss.

After sanding we wiped the dust away with a damp towel, let it dry a few minutes and put on a think coat of primer. We let the primer dry for a good 30 mins to an hour before we started with our first coat of black. After that dried we applied one more coat which pretty much covered everything. I did go back and do a few touch ups, but for the most part 2 coats was plenty. (There are no pictures of the actual painting process due to the fact that I was covered in paint from head to toe – literally I had paint in my hair and between my toes for 2 days!)
The finished product back inside! It looks so much better. H’s kitchen is pretty outdated – check out those floors, but the black table makes it look much more modern. And don’t you worry those chair will not be staying. Replacements are in the mail.


All the supplies cost us a whopping $28 plus about 4 hours of labor and we have a brand new table! And it makes us happy to look at it. We keep saying “hey we did that and it looks awesome!”