Refashioned table

Through the magic of Pinterest I reconnected with a blog that I used to follow on Google Reader: Home Stories from A to Z. She had hosted a blog hop about how to decorate with 25 other bloggers. Her particular topic was soooo helpful to me! It’s about Finding Your Decorating Style. I had already been in the process of overhauling our long-neglected house and decorating around a theme. After reading her excellent article I have decided on a name for my decorating style: Transitional Coastal Cottage! Drawing from her post, here’s why I think that:

“If contemporary and traditional got married and had a baby, that baby would be named transitional! … Transitional decorating finds the sweet spot between the comfort and warmth of traditional style and the clean lines and metallic goodness of contemporary style. This look usually has contemporary staple pieces of furniture paired with warm woods and sophisticated metallics.”

“Cottage style decor is light, airy, personal and casual. Under this decor style umbrella you could include: rustic, farmhouse, coastal, country, french country, shabby chic and even industrial decor. Each of these styles has their own unique look, of course, but they share many commonalities. Cottage decor incorporates modest moldings such as plank walls, well-worn or reused vintage pieces, second hand treasures, and painted furniture. It is a look that is easy to achieve on a tight budget.”

I like the descriptions that are in bold – especially “easy to achieve on a tight budget!” I really like a beach house look, even if I don’t live on the beach (maybe one day). I live in driving distance to the beach, but even if I lived in the middle of Kansas I can still achieve a beach house look. In fact, I almost named my blog A Beach House in Suburbia!

Today I want to share with you one thing I completed this past month (okay, I’ll be honest. I finished it today) that reflects our moving to this look for our home.

I had mentioned to a friend of mine that I was looking for a round side table. She said she had one I could have.

This is a really nice piece of furniture. Real wood. Solid! But the color didn’t match our furniture. It had been my plan to paint it white all along anyways, so that’s what I did. I painted it white. (She had a piece of furniture she wanted to paint too so we had a painting party!)

Then, thanks to a pin I had, I followed the directions on drawing a compass rose from this blog post but scaling it to my table size.    Then, taping it off, I very carefully painted it. Taping and retaping took a while. From far away it looked okay.     But when you get a little closer you can see the bleeding. It was bad. I couldn’t live with it.   I thought about repainting the white over the bleed but I didn’t know if the blue would shine through the white. Then I thought I’d distress it by lightly sanding it so the bleed wouldn’t be so obvious.

 However the blue paint started peeling off and staining the white part. This is what it looked like. Yuck. Not at all what I had envisioned!
 So I sanded it down til it looked like this. It sat that way for a few weeks. I didn’t have the time or the heart to tackle it again. Finally, I was tired of looking at it in the living room so I repainted the top white, redrew the pencil lines and decided to freehand paint it.   This was looking better.
 But then I painted in the circle. Dang. I painted right through the white parts of the compass’s points! By now, I didn’t care. I was not about to try to paint white over it, or sand just that part down. The circle was staying in its entirety! Today I put a layer of Minwax Finishing Wax to protect the compass rose from getting scratched. And now it’s done!I like the way it turned out! It’s a great side table – plenty big to hold books, coffee cups and more! See that cabinet in the back? I’ll tell you about it next week!