The Evolution of a Coffee Table

Just after my husband and I were married, we went to breakfast in Berkeley with my parents. Afterwards, we all went to Urban Ore, a great big junk store of epic proportions, where my husband decided I had a screw loose after wondering what I could possibly find in the massive piles of dirty, broken, shabby housing materials (fabulous old windows! old molding! old pieces of marble! old doorknobs!). Hello?!?!


After that, we cruised into a funny old flea-market type store that sold furniture and was run by two eastern european gypsy type guys. I saw this coffee table, and offered them less than they were asking, and apparently I offended them. So much so that they ran me off. Not to worry, I returned the next day incognito. Yes, I changed my hairstyle and spoke with a slight spanish accent and again offered to buy the table, this time for $35 as offered. I could see it's potential and I wasn't giving up without a fight! It was mine.

So home I lugged it (on top of my sister's jeep - Hi Jonna!), with all the intentions in the world of immediately giving it a shabby paint treatment. Well, fast forward 6 years and this picture was taken last week. Still in it's original shabby, but-not-quite-right-shabby state. I had had it. My sister said paint it to match the off-white pillows on your couch. After 6 years of fussing about it, I dove in the very next day.

Here it was primed and ready for paint, stain, distressing, more stain, and 2 coats of glaze.

Being that i have small children, and we constantly put our feet, glasses, snacks, etc. on this table, keeping it all white wasn't very practical. So I did the above mentioned steps and this is the result:

It is a distressed, coffee-with-cream color that I think turned out great. The multiple layers of stain and glaze in addition to the distressing really gave it a rich, layered, timeworn look. I love it and am so happy I finally took the plunge! It also really lightens up my living area as my couches are a muted tapestry pattern of persimmon, spruce, and wheat with chocolate leather bases and nailhead trim. I do not have the white slipcovered sofas I dream of, so I use lots of vanilla colored accessories to mitigate the richness of the sofas: boutis-style down filled pillows, a brown paisley indian block print on cream background euro pillow, a creamy shag rug, and now the coffee-with-cream coffee (pardon the pun) table. I think it works!