End Table Before & After

Last week I showed you this great little end table that I picked up at the thrift store.




It has a great shape, but otherwise aesthetically it leaves a lot to be desired. It's not real wood and it's age is showing.




To bring some glory back to this mid-century modern piece, I decided to paint it white. I thought it would be a great color to keep it modern and retro and fun. Plus I already had white paint so the "free" part played a big role in the color decision (but you guys had some great suggestions last week for how I should paint this piece - you all are so much more creative than I am!).

First things first (isn't the first thing always first? seems redundant to say that doesn't it?), I took the sliding doors off. They popped out relatively easily, but if they didn't I was prepared to carefully spray paint them in place. I got lucky.







Even though I was planning to prime and paint, this end table is made out of laminate which means it's surfaces are super slick. To help the paint and primer stick that much better, I sanded the whole thing down with a medium-fine sandpaper. I wasn't trying for a "real" sanding job, I just wanted to do enough to rough it up a bit.

Unfortunately, while sanding I noticed a giant crack in the base.

Doh!

Nothing a little wood glue, a clamp, and 20 minutes couldn't fix though.




Then it was time to prime. I lined the inside of the cubby hole so I wouldn't get spray paint in the tracks where the doors slide, and then I sprayed away with my spray paint primer.

Ignore the random piece of laminate floor underneath the end table. There was a hole in the plastic and I didn't want to spray paint my patio :)

While that dried, it was time to tackle the knobs. The little knobs on the doors were the perfect size and shape, but, dude they were dirty!




I found some Brasso that we already had and slathered the stuff all over the knobs.




Now, I don't know if I'm just slow or if there's some super secret brass polishing trick I'm not aware of, but I felt like cleaning the knobs took forever. They are so small that it was hard to really clean them without my fingers getting in the way. At one point I whipped out some q-tips and that seemed to help a bit.

Finally I was able to get them in fairly respectable shape.

Not perfect, but much better!

Once that was done, I went back to my end table, with my now-dry primer, and I sprayed on a couple coats of glossy white spray paint. There are two important things to remember when spray painting to get a good finish:

(1) Keep the can moving back and forth the entire time you spray.
(2) Do multiple thin coats instead of one thicker coat to get even coverage and prevent drips.

Do those things and you're almost guaranteed a perfect finish.

Once my paint was once again dry, I jammed the sliding doors back into place (it was a lot harder to get them back in than it was to take them out!) and screwed in my knobs.

Then, Wally! I had a great new retro end table that can go anywhere. You know, once I finish those floors and start putting real furniture in the house...










And a close up of the knobs I spent so much time on:




To save you the scroll, here's a side-by-side top-to-bottom before and after.







Me like.





As usual I'll be linking this project up to a bunch of great parties, make sure you check out the button in my sidebar or my Parties Page to see where I'm linking up.