We bought this cheap table a few years ago from a budget store in France when we first moved there for an expat. I think we paid under 10 euro for it in total, but even being so cheap the small side table served us well over the few years that we had it.
We bought it back in 2019 and brought it home with us to Canada. It is still in pretty decent shape so we decided not to toss it out before moving home. The wood on top was getting to be water and coffee stained and the paint on the metal was chipping away. It was looking a little tired to say the least, so I figured I'd try to give it a bit of a face lift. It's a cheap table so if I made it worse it wouldn't be that big a deal.
So I started by sanding the top to try and remove the water stains. I didn't look closely at the wood before starting but I quickly realized that the wood is just MDF particle board with a very thin layer of wood veneer on top to give the appearance of real wood. I really don't know why I thought it was a solid piece of wood.
So anyway, I sanded right through the vaneer around the edges almost immediately after just a few passes. I had to stop right quick. You can see the worn off vaneer around the edges if you look closely at the photos. I don't notice it anymore though now that the table is finished.
I stained the top with all my leftover stain that I have from my mudroom renovation. I tried to match the color roughly to our floors upstairs.
The little bit of sanding that I did and the staining, ended up covering the water marks that had built up over the years.
The top actually turned our really nice and looked completely new in the end. I also oiled the top to protect it a little from future spills.
I had taken the top off and spray painted the metal base with a black metalic paint as well. I didn't show that step, probably because the garage was filled with aerosol paint fumes and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
So anyway, the project was really simple and didn't take much time at all, maybe only an hour of actual work. The longest part was waiting for the paint to dry, so that was the only reason that it took me two full days to complete.
The water stains resurfaced a little but you can't tell from a distance and even still I think the table looks a hell of a lot better than it did before. It was a simple and fun project for a weekend and a nice change from the last big undertaking I took with my mudroom renovation. What do you think?
