Round coffee table – you won’t believe the before!

You’ve heard me say it again and again – if you can find a piece that is made of solid wood, it is so worth saving!  Take this Game-of-Thrones-crazy round coffee table that I picked up for $40 and refinished to a beautiful statement piece for my family room.

I finally have a completed project to share with you – and it feels like it’s been FOR-E-VER!

This round coffee table was actually done a couple of weeks ago, but it looked terrible in front of the ugly Burgundy sofas Hubby left behind, so I waited until my new sectional from Ashley HomeStores arrived before photographing.

And am I ever glad I did – it is the perfect size and perfect fit to tuck in with my new sectional and (despite it’s flaws) I’m thrilled with how it all worked out.

Would you believe I picked this beauty up for $40 from Kijiji?  Seriously – it’s solid wood, heavy as heck and a custom made piece – but…

 

Yup, it had a Game of Thrones motif going where someone had actually carved a horse head and several flags all over it.

Like seriously carved:

It took over 3 hours of sanding – including using a belt sander with 30 grit sandpaper on it (that’s ROUGH) before I had most of the carvings removed.

and even then there were still some areas that I didn’t get all of the carvings out.

At some point you have to throw in the towel though – I could have kept sanding this round coffee table to get these last marks out, but then I would have had to do it to the entire table to keep the surface flat, so I decided that I could live with a few marks.

The table had a circle carved around the outer rim, a cute little trench sort of thing.

I decided that I liked that feature and wanted to replicate it – or I guess re-carve it – into the table top.

I thought a router would be the best bet to get a nice, smooth trough all the way around so I made up a jig that held the router against the outer edge of the table.

BUT

I made the jig out of MDF (crap), and the router ate through my jig,

and then I remembered why I never router…

Yup, after hours of sanding this beautiful round coffee table to almost perfect – I did this.

And cried.

And swore.

And vented on Instagram.

Perhaps an over-reaction, but the sheer frustration of wanting this round coffee table so badly only to destroy it so close to the end.

UGH!

Readers commented that they liked the “branch pattern” and perhaps I could save the table by just routing in a few more to make it look intentional.

That might have worked, if I had any skill with the router whatsoever and could replicate the horrible mistakes I’d made over and over again.

Instead I found a great tutorial for a different router jig and decided I had nothing to lose, so I might as well make the trough wider to try to eat up/hide some of the marks I’d made.

With some more sanding I was able to hide a majority of the router marks and my round coffee table was back in contention again.

Whew!

*Note:  this post contains affiliate links to the products I used.  For full affiliate disclosure, please see sidebar.

I sanded down the rest of the piece (don’t you just LOVE those legs!?!) and gave the entire table a coating of Varathane Weathered Wood Accelerator and my go-to top coat, Varathane Triple Thick Polyurethane.

It’s certainly not perfect, but the errors give it character right?

Hey, we’ve all got “patina” – might as well own it. lol

Regardless, you barely notice them unless you’re looking and this round coffee table is absolutely PERFECT in my new family room.

I couldn’t have found anything that would have fit in with the sectional any better than this piece – and certainly not for $40.

This baby was a labour of love let me tell you.  I don’t think I have ever put as many hours into sanding as I did this coffee table, but now that it’s in my room – and we’ve played games around it – I wouldn’t change a thing.

Except maybe forgoing the router.

I really eff-ing hate my router. lol

A special thank you goes out to the person that originally built this beautiful table, and another to the crazy mo-fo that decided to carve it up so that no one else would want it.  Your creativity and workmanship allowed me the opportunity to give this round coffee table a third go-round.

Have a great one!

 

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