Checker top Coffee Table

Last year there was a yard sale that seemed to go on for several days. For one reason or another I ended up driving by it several times even though it wasn’t close to our house. Every time I passed it, I saw this coffee table. I loved the style. The color? Not so much. I finally stopped and looked around and decided against buying the table even though it was marked at a fair $20. It not only had a not so pleasing color (to put it tactfully). But it had a glaze that was even worse. I passed it up three ventures in a row. Surprised it wasn’t sold, I finally stopped and asked if they would take $15 for it.

SOLD!

YAY!

So I thought.

I won’t lie. This project ended up being dreadful. I tried stripping it first, which became a big unanticipated gooey mess. Then it dried leaving chunks of paint that wouldn’t soften with several applications of an attempt to get it right. Then I sanded ~~a little~~ and got disgusted with the whole thing. When my mother came to visit two months later, she sanded it down quite a bit more while we were cleaning out the garage. Despite her great efforts, it still had lots of bumps from the stripping agent and glaze finish.

Finally one day, I got tired of having it take up so much space in the garage and started painting it. I painted the whole thing this cream color with the drawer a black for contrast. Even though it sat unfinished for a couple months in our living room, the children used it quite a bit. After awhile, I got tired of being just too cramped in there, so I took it back out to the garage. By then the finish on the top was quite worn from the kids playing on it and having never been sealed. I really struggled for quite some time deciding how I wanted to finish it, then finally–while tossing ideas around with my mom, we thought of a check pattern. Yes, of course! I’ve always wanted to try this pattern on a piece, now was the perfect opportunity.

It was actually a lot of fun, even though it took a lot more brain power then just painting it a solid color. Which, by the way, was not working well.