Trash to Treasure {End Table Edition}

I mentioned about a month ago that we got new couches for our living room.  With the new set up we needed an end table to go in the corner between the two.  I did not want to spend a ton of money because like I said about the couches, I don’t see this as forever furniture since we have little kids who climb all over it.  Don’t get me wrong, I still want our house to look nice and I do appreciate quality things, but this wasn’t really a time I wanted to throw down a bunch of money on something.

So we looked at a few thrift stores to see if there was a table there that I could redo.  Sometimes a little love can make a dated piece look great.  We really did not find anything that we liked.  Then one Sunday a few weeks back we were driving home from church and we saw an end table sitting at the side of the road.

My husband turned around and pulled over so that I could jump out and look at it.  It was perfect.  Well, not its condition, it was old and dirty, but it was a good size and I knew that some cleaning and paint would revive it.

That’s the fortunate part.  The unfortunate part is that once we loaded it in the car we realized that it reaked of cigarette smoke.  I was worried that might be a deal breaker since I read a few things online that indicated that it’s really hard to get the smell of smoke out of furniture, but I decided to try a few things I read online to see if they might help.

First I cleaned the table.  Really well.

Then I covered every surface in baking soda and let it sit for some time.

Next I primed it in Kilz Premium primer.  The Kilz can said that it was stain and odor blocking so I thought that if I every little bit of it (inside too)  it just might work.  I applied 3 coats of primer just to be sure.

I let that cure for quite some time to see if it had indeed fixed the smell issue.  The smell was gone so I moved on to painting.  I found this blue paint in the Mistint section of Lowes and applied 3 coats all over.  After the paint had cured for almost a week I applied a clear protective coat of polyurethane.  And then I applied two more coats.

I then set out to find some new handles for the drawer.  I thought that some fun handles might be nice.  Unfortunately the holes from the original handles were 4.5 inches apart which is not a size readily available at Hobby Lobby and Lowes which were the two places I looked before giving up.

So I took the old handles, cleaned them and spray painted them with some silver spray paint I had leftover from another project.

We’re very happy with our new table and thankfully it did not take too much work to make it over.  It didn’t cost too much money either.  Here’s a budget breakdown:

• Table- $0
• Kilz- $10.10
• Mis-tint paint- $5.33
• Poly- $0 (leftover from another project)
• Silver spray paint (leftover from another project)

Total: $15.43

Anyone else have any makeover anything from the curb lately?  Any tips to share about getting the smoke smell out of old furniture?

Cat

Cat is a teacher turned stay-at-home mom of two boys.  She shares crafts, DIY projects, kids’ activities, and a little bit about life in Ohio.  Learn more about her and the blog on the About page.