Resurrecting the End tables

My parents bought these end tables right after they first got married in 1977, the year of the first Star Wars film. We decided that they needed some updating. The form of the tables–their basic lines and structure–were pleasing, and we also liked the glass on top, but we wanted to find some way to unify the whole thing. My darling fiancé had the idea to wrap the bottom shelf in a fun patterned fabric.

{Unfortunately this is the best picture that we have. It’s really more a a during photo.}

The first step was preparing the wood, which meant sanding off 30+ year old stain. I’ve done this with an old desk my grandparents gave me. Not sanding furniture that you want to fix up is a big mistake, because skipping this step makes you miss out on the beautiful texture of old wood, which is what furniture used to be made of before the days of Ikea. Sanding the furniture made me closer to it in some strange way, like I was connecting to it on some empathetic level. This experience all sounds very poetic, but the emotion involved was likely the result of delirium caused by the 100+ degree heat on our back porch, in addition to the fact that we did not own an electric sander. We now do.

We then primed the tables with Kilz and painted each one with an eggshell color in satin finish. I learned I do not have the delicate touch required for painting tables. Four years of art school down the drain.

We took the cool and quirky patterned fabric that we found at The Common Thread, and covered the bottom shelf. After securing the fabric using our staple gun, we reinforced the shelf from beneath with metal brackets and screws.

We are really pleased with the results. It has changed the entire feel of the room and has made it lighter, with a fun splash of color. The tables are more unified as objects now, because looking through the glass is actually an engaging experience now, as opposed to before, when the bottom shelf was a dingy, woven wicker. Most importantly, it was fun to work together on imagining and then crafting objects from our space into things that no one else has. Even if we had unlimited income, I would still want these tables in our house.

Look how great it looks next to the shelf we made.

Théo thinks he did all the work.

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The Common Thread

There’s a new fabric store in Austin that opened just in time to supply us with the materials that we needed for our end tables. As soon as we set foot in The Common Thread we realized that it wasn’t so common. Many of the fabric selections that we see offer tired prints that I could never imagine bringing into our home; but the fabrics at The Common Thread are beautiful. We walked around in awe for about thirty minutes before remembering why we had come. If you get a chance, it is definitely worth stopping by. Plus, the owner of the shop is really nice. She put up with my incredibly limited knowledge of sewing and patiently explained the differences between all of her fabric shears.

Here’s a sneak peak of the fabric we chose for our end table makeover. Check back next week to see how it all came together.

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