Refinishing that which I'd already refinished.

Two posts in two days! Will wonders never cease?

This is a project I've been sitting on for a few weeks, actually. "Sitting on" as in "I uploaded pictures from my camera to the computer, but I haven't had time to write up a post because July has been cuh-RAZY," and not as in actually sitting in a literal sense. Although, it is furniture, so I suppose I could.

We've had a nice enough couch and area rug in our living room for a while, up until recently accompanied by what I can only diplomatically refer to as an ottoman. Oh, the cube of faded blue cotton served The Awesome Husband well for years before I met him but it was beginning to look, shall we say... "out of place." (It does fit in much better now in the semi-finished basement, with the dart board and Pearl, the drum set we're foster-parenting.* It's a long story.)

So, clearly the ottoman has been put out to pasture. We replaced it with -- what else -- a coffee table that had been collecting dust in the basement, waiting for us to be sufficiently nudged into refinishing it. Doesn't everyone have random pieces of furniture collecting dust in the basement? No? Here's what it looked like before. Colorful, whimsical, great back in 2007; each of those little squares is a piece of a magazine page, chosen for color and visual interest. It's not the best photo, but you can get a better sense of it here:

It did look pretty interesting, but it's definitely not the right fit for today. (Also, wow, there is noooo reason for you to poke around and read other 2007 posts. Or at least, if you do, please don't laugh too hard at me. k, thanks.)

The Awesome Husband was kind enough to sand down the layers of polyurethane and paper and paint for me, so I could do a couple coats of primer:

I also got lots of splotches of primer on the driveway. Go me!

When I did the actual painting, splotches of paint on the driveway weren't a big deal because I astutely chose black paint. It's the look we decided we wanted, PLUS we had black paint leftover from this project.

And really, doesn't it look great (which is to say, not what you'd find in a college dorm room) all dolled up and at home in the living room?

Of course, this time of year it typically has some pet hair on it.

*I ordinarily hate the use of "parent" terminology when one is not actually talking about human children, but in this case I'm being sarcastic and somewhat at a loss for how else to say it: we don't own the drum set, but we're letting it live with us. Hmm. Perhaps could have just gone with that phrasing. Next time!