When we decided to split our long living room into two distinct spaces, I knew I’d need another coffee table. I wanted to stay with wood, but I did not want it to look like the other table I had from EQ3 that was rectangular.
I was looking for rounded edges and saw something I really loved but that was priced several hundreds of dollars, which was not a budget I wanted to invest in a second coffee table.
I, of course, had been looking through Facebook Marketplace for a while until I fell on an old oval table. It was really ugly, but all I wanted was the top to DIY the table I had seen.
I just needed it to have the right dimensions for my space and also it had to be real wood. The price was a ridiculous $20, so I contacted the seller and it turned out to be real wood.
My hubby went to get it for me, and it I had to get to work!
The first thing I started with was to sand the top and remove the little groove it had all around. I started with 120 grit, then 220 and finally 360 to get a smooth finish. Sanding was easy, the stain and varnish were easily removed.
Then we removed the bottom part. I had to flip it in order to sand it on the other side.
It was nailed with small nails to the top so was easy to remove.
At first, I wanted to have the bottom be the top, but despite filling the wholes and sanding, they still showed and my stain wasn’t going to be dark enough to hide them, so I left it as it was.
Once the top was sanded and cleaned, I made a few stain tests on the side to see what I preferred most. If you follow me on Instagram and were there at the time, you may have seen the story with the different stain suggestions.
I ended up going with option A above, which is the white wash followed by an age wood accelerator stain by Varathane. I use this often and love that it gives an aged look to the wood.
For the white wash, I diluted white paint with water with a two to one ratio,
I applied the white wash with a lint free rag and wiped the excess right away, followed by the stain before the white wash dried, and wiped excess as well. Let it dry and applied a matte clear water-based varnish to protect it.
Then, my husband cut the legs. I had two pieces of tree stumps in the garage since a while. So, I drew up the legs on the stumps, measured to make sure they’re proportional and my husband but them with the table saw. One of them was thicker that the other and I left them as is because I liked that they are not the same thickness, I think it adds more of an organic and natural feel to the table.
Cutting them wasn’t easy because of the thickness of the wood and the knots, it took time but we made it (or rather he made it. :))! Then I sanded the legs to create rounded edges and a smooth surface, and used the same white wash and stain combo as above.
Finally, I marked down where I wanted to position the legs on the bottom side of the tabletop. I simply laid them there and drew around them with a pencil. I placed them in different directions, so one is parallel to the table and the other perpendicular. Then glued them in place and voilà!
I’ve been so happy with it, and I saved so much, literally only cost me $20! I already had everything else.
If you want to do something similar, there are many oval tables that can be found on Marketplace or you can alternatively buy wood and put it to size. Same goes for the stump, you can either find it in nature or just on Marketplace.