The hall table of all hall tables

I love a good blog. Food, baking, DIY, renovation blogs, you name it. On one of my daily blog trawls, I came across The Little Brown House and this headboard to hall table post. Fabulous! I thought, as I had just recently pulled this interesting little feature down from our entry way. 

It was kinda cute, and it did kinda work in the space, but once the red wall was gone, it too, was destined to be obliterated (well, stored under the house). So off I went, scouring local Op. shops and demo yards in search for the perfect, soon-to-be hall table.

Now here's the bit where I tell you I found the perfect piece, hidden away in the back of the junk yard, so perfect it practically jumped out at me as I walked past and what's more it was marked down to 75c or something ridiculous like that.

Sorry to disappoint you people. This ain't Hollywood.

I admit, I gave in. Instead, I went in search for buying a ready made hall table. No cutting / sanding / DIY'ing at all.

And wouldn't you know it, I couldn’t find anything. Nadda. Zip. Nothin' at all.

Bugger.

I decided to have one last try at my local lifeline megastore and came across this little beauty.

It's an off-white/cream colour, with some dents and nicks and some weird shaped stains that had soaked through the paint. You may also spot some little funky orange spots all over too..Although it comes up remarkably well in the photos, let me assure you, it was pretty gross.

Yeah, it's certainly not the bargain basement price I was after, but heck, I was not going to be defeated with this!

My only real issue was size. My entry is only teeny Being without a tape measure and not wanting to look like a dork for asking, I decided to measure it with my wallet. Figuring my wallet was about 8 inches long, I measured 1.5 wallets deep and about 6 wallets long.

Let's break for a little insight about yours truly. I'm a virgo by birth and I certainly live up to the stereotype. Love to plan. Hate surprises. Borderline crazy attention to detail. Colourcode & coordinate everything. Birthday party coming up? Let me take care of it. Need to organise a hen's night / baby shower / your own wedding? Step aside sister, that's my territory. Yet to totally contradict all that, I can be incredibly lazy. Hence the measurement by wallet.

I got it home and then the inevitable. It didn’t fit.

Damn you wallet measurements!

We were off by about half an inch. Dammmnnn.

So I lugged the thing down the stairs decided on my plan of attack.

I decided to cut off not only a bit of width, but also length as well. For this, I recruited my trusty old handsaw. Plus, this time, I measured. With a ruler.  

I then sanded up all the cuts, and gave the whole thing a thorough sanding and a cleanup.

I used White Knights Squirts undercoat to prime it all over, followed by a few coats of White Knights White Satin. (Does anyone else get that desire just to drown the whole thing in one go? Spray paint dribbles are not nice, but damn it tests my patience doing lots of lighter coats!) I managed to finish both cans on this little ditty. It was the first time I used White Knights and I must admit I was kinda disappointed. The coverage just wasn’t there for my liking.  

I then applied some quatrefoil wallpaper printed paper to the back of the shelf. I had planned on stenciling it on, but I was soo not in the mood. I found a quatrefoil image online, recoloured it in Publisher and then printed it out on regular old A4 paper. Don't judge me - I'll get around to stencilling that baby on one day soon...

Et Voila! Look at that baby now! Perfect.

A few hints for first timers -

1. Wack a tape measure or even a measuring tape from your sewing draw into your bag if you're furniture shopping. You could even snitch* a paper one from Ikea next time you're there! (*I don’t condone stealing- they give those babies away for free anyways).

2. Be persistent at your local thrift shops and demo yards. They might not always have what you're looking for, so go in with an open mind and you might come away with something even better than what you first planned.

woo hoo! Check me out on The DIY Show Off, DebbieDoo's Newbie Party and TDC's Before & After Party. Thanks for showing me some newbie love, blog land!!