DIY - Sofa Table

I just want to preface this by saying that I don’t generally do DIY projects because the super awesome ideas I have in my head, never come to fruition once I start with a project. The creativity never seems to pour out of my fingers, and I get extremely frustrated and angry at myself.

 

When we started this adoption, I started thinking about toy storage -- because to be quite frank, our house is not very kid friendly. I decided that for the living room I wanted a sofa table. I would put it along the one wall in our living room that currently houses three plant tables. I wanted one specifically with a shelf on the bottom so that I could put a couple of wicker baskets under there for convenient toy storage. I began my search at Good Will and St. Vincent’s, and several other thrift stores -- the plan was to acquire this new piece of furniture at a bargain price. However, after months of searching without any luck, I began to look at higher end furniture stores around our area. Still, nothing. I left work Saturday morning heading towards the YMCA, and noticed a sign for a garage sale. I hate going to garage sales. So I drove right by, but after I passed a few driveways, I turned around. Reminder: I hate garage sales. They give me major anxiety.

 

I slowly drove past the house scoping out their stuff. Nothing … but just as I was past their driveway, I noticed a small table in the back. I quickly turned around, and parked my car. There it was. Just a small little table, with an additional shelf on the bottom. It wasn’t nearly as big as what I had envisioned, but here it was. For sale. They wanted $20. I offered $15. They accepted. The young boy manning the cash table offered to carry it to the car for me, and I was on my way.

 

It was one of those pieces of furniture that you just know is “crafty” which is why I thought $15 was a pretty good deal. When I got home and took it out of my car, I noticed that most of the legs were very unstable. The wood was very light, and then legs were painted an ugly hunter green. I figured, no big deal, Ryan and I can whip this in shape in no time.

 

Then Ryan came home. He said, “You paid $15 for this?? You should’ve only paid $4.”

Well then.

Ryan is no carpenter, but eventually the two of us figured out how to stabilize the legs. It took a few long screws, and some wood glue. I’m still not sure how much of all that was necessary, but it was steady.

Except it leaned a bit to the right. It seemed that one of the legs was shorter than the others. Crap.

Not to worry! I pulled out a couple of velvet round pads, stuck one on each of the three legs, and two on the short one -- and you would never know it has a defect!

Then we had to decide what color to paint it. I thought we would just re-paint the legs. Once we did that, Ryan said it looked bad and we should probably paint the rest. I didn’t want it a solid color, and still wanted it to look “crafty”. This is what we ended up with:

Not exactly what I envisioned in my head, but it will work. Now I just have to get a couple Thirty-One Utility bins for toy storage and we’ll be set!