We were almost embarrassed to bring it home!

Well this old coffee table was a really ugly when we found it!

Sometimes we’re asked, where do we find such pieces of furniture to refinish. Well in short, our eyes are always open. Sometimes it can be found at an estate sale, a yard sale, social media sites, antique stores and we’ve even found furniture on the side of the road that we restored.

We found this table, however, in a consignment store some distance from where we live. We had been to the store before and new it has the potential to have some cool stuff but it wasn’t really our intent to make a stop there that day. We weren’t even specifically looking to find anything that day! However, it’s usually at times like that that we find the best treasures. So just by coincidence we were traveling down the interstate that day and we decided to make a quick run inside and see what they have.

It was also a happy moment because we were traveling with a utility trailer and had the means to bring it home. Many times when we see something large we really don’t have to space for it in our SUV and and have to come back with a truck. Here is a picture of it loaded on our trailer.

By the time we were heading home it was getting dark so it was really hard to see what it was on the trailer. It looked like a long dark box that night. In my mind, I was embarrassed as we traveled looking back in the mirrors behind us at what bore a remarkable appearance to a coffin! So I wondeded if anyone traveling thought the same thing as they got a casual glance at it.

At any rate, we finally got it home in the dark and was able to unload it. Here we are planning to distress it but it looks like it had a had a pretty distressing life already.

So I wonder if we can make it beautiful? As it turns out we were right in bringing it home. Finally it was time to make it pretty again. So it all starts with carefully but quickly giving it a pre-sand with fine sand paper. We usually start with a 220 grit in most cases.

A word of caution though, sometimes furniture is constructed with a thin wood veneer. It may look solid but in reality the veneer is simply covering up some inferior wood product like particle board, etc. Even a lot of old furniture that would be considered antique can still have a thin veneer. Sometimes you can even see chips in where it’s been dragged across a floor or something.

When you sand a piece with a veneer it’s extremely import to be be careful and only use light pressure. I remember on one of our first projects we tried to sand out a deep scratch on a headboard. We thought it was solid wood. To our disappointment though it turned out to be a veneer. We learned quickly not to sand deeply on such pieces. We also learned to do inspect for a veneer before purchasing in order to know what your getting into and how much work it will be.

Scratches don’t always matter any way. After all, aren’t we trying to distress it? Don’t we want it to have character? Certainly we do! Still it’s best to factor the condition into it when we buy it to be on the safe side.

After much work and meaningful meditation we ended up with the finished product that you see below. We wanted to keep the wood top rather than paint it. So after the appropriate prep work we brushed a poly-acrylic onto the surface and distressed the the legs and cabinet underneath with paint.