6.27.2012

Trunk Table

The project I have to show you today was almost an epic FAIL! It was super frustrating and I almost quit and cried in the middle of it. I didn't end up sitting and crying about this, but I did walk away from it for a day before I came back to finish it. Sometimes that just what you have to do to prevent yourself from hitting things with a hammer.

See this trunk....


Let me give you a little back story on this thing. When I was around 13ish I needed one of these trunks to take to girl scout camp. My parents bought this trunk and let me decorate it. They were both trying to convince me to stain it so I could use it after camp and wouldn't ruin the wood. Did I listen to them? HA! Does any 13 year old listen to their parents??? Not me. I wanted to paint it. So they let me. {Love my artistic skills? lol}

Fast forward 10 years or so -------> The trunk now lives, abandoned, in my parents basement......where their cat goes to puke. See where this is going?? Yeah, she puked on the lid. Right under the "M" towards the front edge. My dad did his best to clean it off, but there was still a slight stain. Um, gross.

Fast forward another 6 or 7 years ------> Dad brings this trunk to my house because he doesn't want it in his basement anymore. Great, just what I need. A child painted, puke stained trunk sitting in my spare bedroom.

And there is sat for months. I've been wanting to turn it into a little table. It's been on my project list for a long time, but it just seemed like such a pain. Plus I wasn't really sure how to add table legs to something. Anywho, I went for it anyway. First I had to sand all that paint off. Thank goodness we have an orbital sander!! I would not have made it through the sanding without it. Here it is all sanded down. Looking much better!


After I sanded it down I stained it with some stain my dad gave me. Lucky for me, the stain wiped right off the hardware so I didn't have to remove any of it. Win!

Then I added these cheap 6 inch table legs I bought at Home Depot.


Here is where my project went down the crapper in a hurry! I should have googled how to do this before I started. I must have lost my mind that day! I'm going to spare you all the details, but warn you to google this, or ask an experienced man or something before trying to attach table legs to anything!! Seriously.

{Insert pity party for 1}

Day 2:

Figured it out/rigged it to work my way. And now I have this cute little table to set in my front window with my chairs. So happy :)






Slowly but surely this room is coming together. Now if only I could remember to water that plant....

And if you are new here, here's some other projects in this picture you may have missed:
DIY Faux Nail Head Trim
Bow and Flower Pillows
Tea Dyed Curtains
I thought I had blogged about that little magazine bowl, but I can't seem to find the post...hmmm...

Have a great hump day!!


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8 comments:

  1. Yay! SO glad you were able to save the trunk! Amazing what sanding can do. It looks really great sanded. And you reminded me I really need to add legs to the TV stand I painted a while back...but I don't want to, and you said it was hard...hm, maybe it really doesn't need legs. :)

    Brie @ Breezy Pink Daisies

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    1. Um, and when I said sanded the second time I meant to say "stained". It looks really great *stained*!!

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  2. I think heck yes! I love truck tables and totally want one to keep blankets in.
    It turned out very lovely. :)

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  3. Should have listened to your parents and stained it in the first place instead of painting it. Just sayin...

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  4. The reason your legs gave you trouble is that they're meant to be screwed into little plates. I used the *exact* same legs from home depot for a project and went through the exact same frustration as you until I went back to the website and found the sold-separately hardware. You attach the plates to the pieces using 4 screws and then the leg can be screwed into the center of the plate- check it out here... um... in case you ever want to do this again :) It turned out great in the end! http://laviediy.blogspot.com/2012/05/adding-space-part-3-diy-mudroom-2.html

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    1. Thanks for the advice Auna! I actually ended up using these little threaded things you put in the wood, then the machine screws of the legs can screw into them. That might not make sense, but that's what I came up with when I checked google to find out how to attach machine screws to something lol. I don't pretend to know what I'm doing!!

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  5. That looks fabulous!!!!! I love how it turned out, quite the improvement. :)

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