My Son's Lego Table

Several years ago, I had a friend give me this little end table. I'd always planned on stripping it and re-staining it. Several months ago though, I decided it would make the perfect lego table for my 4 and 5 year olds. In June, I picked up the lego base plates ($5 each) and I finally started working on it a month ago. I got it sanded a primed and let it sit in my garage for almost a month. Two days before Christmas I decided I needed to get it finished since it was supposed to be my 5 year-olds "big" gift this year. I'm glad to say, I got it done!

Here it is before:

And here is the after:

I picked up the knobs at Home Depot months ago. I primed with gray primer and then added 2 coats of red on top (I sort of ran out of time for painting...). I like the gray primer showing just a smidge through the red. I used epoxy glue to attach the base plates and my husband's college textbooks to "clamp" the plates down while the glue set. I also mod podged some cute scrapbook paper to the inside of the drawer. I used the hard coat stuff and it said to do 5 layers. I think I only did 4. It has a nice hard coating now. It looks even better in person (I think).

Here it is Christmas morning being used by all my boys. I think it's a hit!

This experience has shown me that you can refinish a piece of furniture in a very short amount of time. Next time though, I want to give myself a little more time...

I used a lot of things I already had on hand, so including the base plates and other materials I had to buy for this project, I think the cost of this table came to about $30. Not bad for something my kids will use for years.