My FREE Coffee Table

Say what you will about Craigslist, but it is a miracle of modern thrifting. I've had many fabulous Craigslist finds, the most recent of which is this mission-style coffee table, which I scored for FREE. It was solid and in good shape...

...buuuuuut, mission-style just ain't my thang. So with a mallet and a saw and absolutely no idea what I was doing, I started demo.

I sawed off the decorative pieces on the legs and knocked out the thin supports on either end (they were not structural supports, just decorative.)

My pup waited patiently for me to take a break and throw the ball for her. :)

Once all the demo was done, my poor table was looking pretty rough. I patched all the holes and scrapes with wood filler and tried to ignore the nagging feeling that I had just murdred a perfectly good coffee table.

Then it was time for my favorite activity... sanding. I'll save you my bellyaching this time; if you poke around the blog a bit it won't take you long to figure out that I loathe sanding. But in this case it really did help smooth out all the damage I did with my little demolition derby. *Begrudging shrug and insolent eye-roll*

Finally, I primed with Kilz Original and painted with Valspar's Caribbean Walk-- my go-to paint for most of my little makeover projects these days. I also brushed on two layers of Minwax's polycrylic sealant to the table top, to protect it from damage and stains. 

Here it is, post-makeover:

You can kind of see from this side how the whole style of it looks different without the mission detailing.

I have one small complaint: there's a thin little trough-like thing all the way around the table, and it is a terrible crumb-catcher, and tricky to clean. And hell hath no fury like me when I'm slightly inconvenienced.

But other than that, I love this little guy. And it was free, free, free. :)

One more look:

Do you have any great freebie stories to share? Or Craigslist horror stories, for that matter?

<3 Cara