This Is: A Side Table

This is a side table.

This is a sanded side table.

This is our new side table.

For those of you who are friends with me on Facebook, you might recall me saying something last month about finding a $20 table at the Habitat Restore. This is that table. And it actually cost less than $20 because I had a coupon (yes, I used a coupon at the Restore, I'm thrifty like that). This is why I bought it. I opened the lid and saw this hole inside. I'd never seen anything like it.

Does it chew into the storage space below? Yes. But I'm a sucker for anything unique. So I bought it. Structurally it was still really good. I didn't actually have to do any repairs to the wood other than sand off the old finish, which took awhile, but it was coming off already anyway (some of it came off when we peeled off the sticker to pay for it). The only thing I had to do was swap out the hinges. They were loose and rusty, so they had to go.

I thought it would look nice with a stained top and a painted base. Gretchen thought it would look even better if we stained the recessed panels, too. (She sure knows how to make my job harder. But she was right. It looks killer with the stained panels.) I already had the stain, the lacquer and the white paint, so that part of the job cost me nothing more than my time.

The only thing I didn't like about the table was the square wooden knobs. They didn't feel right. So I found these porcelain ones on Etsy. I was looking for vintage ones, but these had a vintage vibe, so I snatched them up. I spent more on hinges and knobs than I did on the table, but I'm OK with that because the table was so cheap.

There was only one problem with the new knobs, though. The old knobs screwed in from the back. The news ones bolted in from the front. So the left one ran into the box, even after I trimmed the bolt all the way down. The door was so close to the box that even a nut wouldn't fit between the two when I closed the door. So I drilled a hole in the box to make room. Problem solved.

Now, I just have one problem to overcome: keeping the family from filling it with junk.