My bargain upcycled table

Now I’m going to let you know that I’m feeling pretty smug about this one. Not only did I get the table for free, but I’ve got it (in my humble opinion) looking pretty awesome and didn’t cost the earth.

A bit of the back story as to why I’m so obsessed with this table – when the handsome one and I were looking at houses, we were looking at ALL the houses and realised we needed to make a list, otherwise we would never find a house as we didn’t have any kind of criteria. So we took it in turns to talk about the things that were important to us; you may have guessed it but having a big kitchen with plenty of space and if possible a wood burner was my ultimate dream. Through hard work, blood sweat and grateful tears that’s now become a reality, but what’s a kitchen without a table to sit around and drink tea (ok fine, wine) until your hearts content?  I really wanted a chunky antique pine table, so I had my eye on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Preloved, when I saw on marketplace a lady was giving away an oak table, winner! I tried to talk the handsome one into taking a trip down to Cirencester halfway through taking a wall down but funnily enough he wasn’t into it.

With a little help, I managed to get it from Cirencester to the house and let’s just say it wasn’t the prettiest or nicest smelling table but it was free and I could see the potential. I didn’t like the darkness of the oak and wanted to paint the legs, but as it was a freebie it gave me a bit more confidence that if I messed it up, it wouldn’t be a huge loss.

I started by using the hand sander on the main part of the table to get rid of years of grime, cup marks, pen stains and so forth. I already had the sander, so just had to buy a few more sheets which were around £3. Naively, I thought it would be relatively straight forward, but  it was bloody hard work albeit extremely rewarding.

Once I had finished sanding the top, I used a wire brush (which I got from B&Q for £3.48) on the legs so that I could prime them and then used the lovely Cornforth White from Farrow & Ball paint to paint the sides and the legs, with the help of some masking tape, of course. The primer was £9 but I really didn’t use much and the sample pot of Farrow & Ball was £4.50.

So there you go, my first piece of up-cycled furniture and for around £20! I thoroughly enjoyed this project and was really proud of how it turned out considering I’d never done anything like this before. If you’re thinking about giving up-cycling a go, then don’t wait, go for it!

 

A x