Repurposed: From Changing Table to Sewing Desk

A couple of weeks, okay more like a month and a half ago, I found this changing table sitting beside the dumpster at my apartment complex.  I immediately scooped it up.  I saw a whole new potential to this gem.  I called my mom and asked her if she could help me upcycle it, and the first thing out of her mouth was, "Are you trying to tell me something?!"  So after calming her fears that I was/am not expecting another child, I explained to her that I wanted to take it from its current terrible state to this awesome vision I had for it.

She never really did get around to helping me with it.  That was totally fine by me because when I'm ready to start working on something, there is no stopping me until I finish.

The whole process took longer and was harder work than I had anticipated.  That's okay; I like a good challenge.





This is what it looked like before.  It had all of the Masonite boards in it as well, but they were warped.  I knew that I was going to be replacing the shelves as soon as I looked at it. I immediately thought fabric storage when I grabbed it, but somewhere between that moment and me purchasing materials it turned into a sewing table. 

 

I removed the shelves and supports.  I then tightened up whatever hardware that needed it and sanded this baby down.  This part when by fairly quickly. I bought some boards from Home Depot and cut those down to size and primed those so that they would be ready to go when I started with the painting.

 I used Valspar interior paint sample in Tranquility from Lowe's for the main color.  I love this beautiful shade of aqua.  As the name implies, it is very tranquil. It's such a fresh, crisp, and clean color to look at for me.

 

I used Valspar's Polar White sample for the base on the top shelf.  As much as I like the outcome of the top part of the table, I would never recommend anyone doing what I did.  I found a quatrefoil design online and printed it out on the underside of contact paper.  I cut out the negative spaces, adhered it to the board, traced with a pencil, and then moved the stencil until I complete traced it all across the board.  After all that was done, I painted the spaces with the blue paint and some metallic gold acrylic paint that I had.  This was painstakingly laborious.  I had to go over it multiple times and sand down between coats because  I had layered so much paint.  I did all this with a teeny little art brush so that I wouldn't mess up entirely.  After I finished the design, I went back over the white spaces.

Pay attention to the gold paint not the terrible and sloppy paint job I did!.  For a cheap acrylic paint, it did a fantastic job.  It is very metallic-y like I wanted it to be.  The gold accent was a spur of the moment idea that sparked up as I was almost finished painting the design.  I think it works really well with the colors I used.  It almost looks like gold leaf to me.

Now I've got myself a pretty little thing to sit behind whilst I stitch goodies.  I don't think you all understand how excited I am to have this little piece of happiness in the corner of my room.  It has opened a lot of space for me!  I'm so proud of it.  I hate to sound so cliche, but one man's trash really is another one's treasure.