My Round Book Table.

Hello, ya'll.  Yep,, that's Texas for everyone, you all.  Judy here.


I was at the Women's Center, a set of stores for raising money to support women who are abused, one day and found a rolling book shelf which looked cool.  I bought it, brought it home and painted it as a zebra print wine cart. I'm using it today at my newest flip house in the corner of the living room.  But I enjoyed that so much, I went back to the Women's Center one day with my pick up and shopped their furniture area.  Everything is donated, so everything is used--usually dated too.

This particular day I had a ton of luck.  I found two end tables exactly like what my mom had in the living room while I was growing up.  One of these I painted as a little Diva table.  I'll post that project later.  I gave Tera the other one as she wants to make it a "block" table for her kids by putting a basket under the top shelf to hold the blocks and lower level be a building station.  I found an octagonal end table with lots of design.  I plan on making a cat house out of that, but for the time being it is living in my garage.  And the last item I bought was a piece I fell madly, hopelessly in love with.  Why?  I LOVE and COLLECT books.  I cannot stand the thought of a book being on the floor, going in a trash, etc.  This table is round, has dividers that divide the second level into four divisions, and I could just see it as a book table.  It sits up on scroll legs and I just knew FOLK ART paint was calling me, the kind with black and white checks and lots of colors.  After I flipped my first house in San Antonio (before that I worked mostly in Amarillo), I came home and attacked my staircase, living room and entry hall, while also working alternately on the round book table.  Here is what it originally looked like at the Women's Center

This is the table I made Diva and gave Tera one like it.

The first thing I did was scratch it up a little with my electric palm sander to take off the slick and make paint stick to it.  Then I used the last of my can of white chalk paint to give a rougher texture and cover some of the dark color. 


After it dried, I added over the next few days several coats of white semi gloss house paint.  My goal was to leave no sign of the brown and to have so many coats of paint it couldn't possibly chip off.  I was using Sherwin Williams interior semi gloss.  I keep cans of that in my house as I have white trim throughout and I'm constantly touching up. 

After I got all the white layers on that I wanted, then the creativity took over.  I set the table in my den across from where I sit and let it sit for several days as I looked at it while working and watching t.v. and trying to envision what I wanted.  I perused websites and blogs of other house furniture painters.  Under "My Favorites" on my computer,  I have saved The Decorative Paintbrush, a blog by two women who paint very colorful folk art designs on furniture for other people.  I can just get my artistic juices flowing looking at their pictures.  My studying similar legs, dividers, scrolls, etc., I can start getting a feel for what I want something to look like. 


I decided to work my way up from the bottom.  I decided that gold would be my shiny accent and that the legs would be black and white, alternating stripes, dots, etc.  I got these pattern ideas from The Decorative Paintbrush.  So I turned the table upside down on the kitchen counter and got out my acrylic art paints.  I get them for like $.89 a bottle at Michaels Craft Store.  I have a collection of brushes from micro tiny to tiny, to graduating upward in size.  My daughter Tera and I use to own a ceramic paint studio and I still have some of the brushes from that store.  I use a lot of blue masking painter's tape to keep lines straight and not bleed into areas I don't want painted.  Remember, acrylic will wash off if you hate what you paint, or its easy to paint over it.  As you will see from the pictures below, that I finished the legs and moved up to the dividers in the table. 


 I'm a blue person; most cars and house design I own is blue, so it should come as no surprise that I decided to do baby blue dividers.  The edges I did in stripe. I use little sticky notes from Office Depot to create the areas that will stay white.  On polka dots, I put little tiny sticky dots on the legs and painted over that area with black acrylic and then pulled off the stick dots to reveal white dots.  The gold between the scrolls of the legs was paint pens from Michaels.  On the bottom of the table is a straight area that I did stripes in two shades of blue, that remind me of a circus tent.  I just hand paint those by doing the whole area with the light blue and then taking a brush and painting downward stripes using another brush of the same size dry to mark where each stripe starts.  This is no exact painting, but the mistakes makes it more whimsical. 


 Next I did the posts between the shelves.  I decided to do exterior posts black with some gold trim, and interior posts leave white with black and blue trims.  You can use painter's tape for masking off what you don't want painted.  Also I used gold paint pen for tiny lines.  After I finished the posts I did a black and white checkered design around both shelf edges and around the edge on top of the table to make a frame.  I think it looks like a circus tent for sure now.  I put stickem strips on the edges to keep the white/white, and painted between them the black.  On the bottom shelf edge I added a black dot in the middle of the white squares to distinguish it from the top shelf.  I probably put three coats of black on the black squares to be sure its filled completely. Plus when I remove the stickems, I usually have to straighten the lines. 

 Sometimes I paint something like the bottom of the black posts with stripes and later decide I don't like them and change them.  So finished product may end up looking different.


After I finished the stripes I used dishes to make circles in the middle of the top of the table to form the interior of a large flower and then hand painted the flower and used acrylic mixed paints to make the petals. 

 After the creativity part is over, then I applied a layer of spray polyurethane. I used Rustoleums 2x Gloss which I buy at Lowes for about $3.50.   This seals that acrylic paint so that it won't run when wet and wash off.  After that dried I applied several layers of liquid polyurethane. This comes in a quart or gallon size.  I like gloss and not satin.  A quart will last a long time and do many pieces of furniture.  I buy it by the gallon when using it on flips to seal over wallpaper and do floors.  Any brand works, but be sure you are well ventilated when applying poly whether spraying or brushing as the fumes are very strong.  Also try to find some that's washable with water for your brushes or you will have to have paint thinner to clean your brushes.  If I had done this first, the acrylic would have smeared from the brushing, but the spray layer set and protected the artwork, and the three coats of liquid brushed on makes the table really, really shiny, like glass and very protected from being used by kids.  I have this setting now in front of my bay window in the dining room and it houses my grandkids blocks and books, etc.  I'll remove it at Christmas for the tree, but I just love it setting there in my "country print" dining room (which was another project). 

This was final picture with urethane applied before set on wood floor in dining room.

 By the way, I work from home a lot, so I have a printer now setting on the flower.  Oh, well, this table is doing double duty, holding a printer and housing toys and books.  As an afterthought, let me encourage you to be very, very diligent in washing your brushes.  I imagine I used up to 8 or 9 on this project and if I had not washed in between they would dry and ruin and you'd have to buy more.  This gets expensive.  I am very motivated in all projects to clean up immediately even between steps all materials, as they are costly and it is ridiculous to let good materials ruin because someone is lazy. 


Well this ends our first project post.  Hope you enjoyed it, and see you next time.