Street find coffee table makeover

Updated: January 31, 2022

I was driving along the street to pick up son #1 (the oldest) when I came across this AMAZING street find.  This beautiful WOOD not laminate, but WOOD coffee table was on its side just begging for me to pick it up.  Of course I obliged rolling it (can you roll a square?) into my van.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.  What a beauty.  I already knew what I was going to do with it.  Chalk paint the bottom part and the legs a creamy white while staining the top a delicious deep dark brown.  And I was going to sell it already planning on what DIY project in the house I could tackle with the money I was going to make.

I prepped the table by wiping in down with a lightly damp cloth and also sanding down the top of the table to get it ready for stain.

Here it is with one coat of my homemade chalk paint in Behr Cottage White which is close to Annie Sloan Original White. A warm white with an ever so slight yellow tinge to it.

I rolled on the first bottom coat with a foam roller.

Here’s a look at the before.  Okay, I forgot to take a picture of the real before.

After I finished a couple of coats of the legs and bottom level, I started to prepare the top.   My hubby had sanded the top with find sand paper.  You can see it below with one coat of Miniwax stain, Jacobean finish, on the right hand side.  The left side is untouched so you can see the before here.

I did a couple of more coats of the stain but wasn’t really getting the color that I had envisioned.  So I brushed on the Miniwax Gel stain and that did the trick.  A couple of coats of the Gel and I got the finished look that I seeking.

I like it so much that I decided to keep it and not sell it as was my original plan.  I like the wood natural top and cottage white combination.  I’ve since done another round table using chalk paint in a gray for the entire table which also looks really nice.

Welcome! I’m Debi Collinson. Designer. Real Estate Investor. In 2006, at the request of a realtor, I staged my very first home. Staging houses was just starting to become popular. I watched every staging show on HGTV that I could find. I was very nervous staging my first house, but the sellers liked their newly redesigned home so much that they turned down an offer for full asking price. I went back to design school and have never looked back.

Since 2006, I have been staging & designing spaces to make them look like they belong in a magazine page, and buying “fixer uppers” to fix up & either sell for a healthy profit or to rent them out. Sign up to receive my e-mails of how to make your home stunning and how to sell your house for top dollar! Check out my whole story + design credentials here.