Coffee Table with Storage

When the girls were younger (pre-iPad younger) we had toys everywhere.

There wasn’t a surface that didn’t have something of theirs on it, and the house was in a constant state of ‘post-tornado’.

My Dad was looking to get us a Christmas gift one year and I begged him to buy us a coffee table with storage in it so I could quickly hide away some of the mess should someone stop by.

He did, and this baby saw a LOT of use:

You can see its a tad scuffed, nicked, crafted and watermarked. Worse still, I put it in the garage to give it a makeover about 8 months ago, so it became even more scuffed, nicked, painted and dirty while in storage.

Time to get off my duff and get to work right?

I unhinged the two lids and clamped them in my Rockwell Jawhorse. This thing has a large wingspan and I was able to clamp both pieces at once to sand them down – which cut my work time down considerably. Love this baby!

Because I was going with a similar stain for the top, I didn’t bother to strip and re-stain the interior, but I did fill the button holes on the ends (I prefer a smooth surface to those things, whatever they’re called). I stained the wood filler as well to hide them as best I could, and then applied three coats of my go-to Triple Thick Polyurethane – sanding between coats.

Water marks should be next to impossible now!

I was planning on leaving the body of this coffee table with storage in the black – but the months in the garage had accumulated dents, nicks and paint spray, so it needed a makeover as well.

Sanded down slightly, one coat of primer and two coats of BM’s Advance paint and voila!

I added castors to the bottom of my coffee table with storage to give it a bit more height and to make it more manoeuvrable.

If you have attention to detail, you’ll notice that the hinges don’t match. (Yes Dad, I see it now) I picked up three sets of hinges from Home Depot the other day, all from the same rack, and no two sets were alike. UGH! I’ve since fixed this, but I took the photos prior to my noticing. Yup, even while I was attaching them I didn’t notice that one side didn’t match the other. How is that even possible? What a L-O-S-E-R!

I wasn’t sure if I was going to re-sell this piece, or keep it – I mean, it’s from my Dad, but the girls don’t really play with many toys anymore…