DIY Coffee Table Make-over, brighten your wood furniture with paint

I've had this solid wood coffee table since my first apartment, many years ago. It's been through a number of moves, and a long period in storage. I thought it was time to make it fresh again. I love the contrast of natural wood and bright white! Isn't it amazing what a little white paint can do?

What you'll need:

• A piece of wood furniture you already have and want to refresh - or you could thrift something in need of some love
• Painter's Tape
• Sand paper
• Krylon White Spray Paint (preferably with primer mixed in)
• Clear Acrylic Laquer (also spray) 

The first thing you'll need to do is decide on the pattern or design you want for your piece. You can see (in the before) that the top of this table has a herringbone type pattern. I initially thought about making a chevron pattern on the top by taping off every other slat in the herringbone, then thought about diagonal stripes and finally decided on this square key design. 

Once you've got your work area set-up, you'll want to lightly sand the surface you'll be painting. I used 300 grit sandpaper and made sure that I sanded the entire surface I intended to paint. Make sure to vacuum away all the dust or use a tack cloth to clean off the surface before you start taping. 

Lay out your pattern with painter's tape, and be sure to cover the rest of the piece so you don't unintentionally paint other areas. I used a ruler to make sure my tape was laid out evenly and then taped some flyers around the edges to protect them and the table legs. 

Make sure that your surface is dust free and then spray away, applying thin and even coats. The toughest part of this project is the drying time. You have to be patient and make sure to allow enough time between coats for each layer to dry completely. I did 3 coats of white with about 1 hour between each coat. 

After the last coat of white, remove the tape before it dries completely, but not while it is still very wet. Allow some extra drying time to make sure that all layers are completely dry. The next step is to lightly sand your pattern. You may end up with some 'edges' where the tape was, and you'll want to lightly sand these and the entire area so you have a nice smooth surface for the lacquer. 

Wipe down the surface again making sure it is dust free before applying the first coat of lacquer. Then apply the first coat of lacquer in the same manner as the paint. This will need a much longer time to dry. I left mine overnight. 

Once completely dry, sand the entire surface. I used 1000 grit sandpaper. You don't want to scratch the surface, just make sure that it is smooth. Clean up the dust and apply a final coat of clear lacquer. 

Once it's dry, peel away the rest of the tape and admire your work! Let's have one more look at the before...

Tired old coffee table made fresh and new! Easy! and only $11.

Cost:

• Table - on hand 
• White spray paint - $7 at home depot
• Clear lacquer - on hand
• Painter's tape - $4 at home depot
• Sand paper - on hand

Have fun with your project and be sure to link to photos in the comments. We'd love to see what you choose to brighten up!

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When she isn't refreshing furniture, Kat is busy designing and building her line of Hand Crafted Eco Luxury Jewellery & Accessories at aeliosdesign.

Store Makeover Part 1 - Tags

Sage and Olivia run by Simone and Cara has agreed to let me use their shop for a makeover/ tutorial lessons. SageandOlivia sells jewelry made from semi-precious gemstones such as coral, agate, turquoise and onyx. Their shop has great pictures of the products, and they have a great mannequin for the necklaces (I am actually jealous of the nice texture on it).   Here is the shop home page for you to see:

 

As you can see they have a lot of great products: bold and colourful  necklaces and bracelets plus a few earrings. Now they have a few sales and in January have been adding lots of products, but they not getting a lot of hits to their pages. Why? I think one reason is their tags.  

Let's look at one of their new items:

This is a great piece;  the pictures are clean and well merchandised.  They only thing I would add is a shot with a size comparison, like place the necklace beside a quarter so people can  gauge the bead size. 

If I were looking for an item like this, how would I describe it?

Bold

Chunky

Asymmetrical

Statement piece

Mixed Metal

Black and White

Red Coral

Let look at their tags:

hmmm, Sageandolivia tags are correct, but I do not think they describe their necklace as well as they could. 

The next step is to search Etsy for similar products to yours to see what tags others are using. I entered "Statement necklace" into the search bar and this what happened.

Options popped up underneath with the most common searches on esty connected to what you started to type. I selected the "chunky statement necklace" and found:

Bingo - this more like what SageandOlivia is doing!!! I then looked at these items to glean other ideas for tags. If you click on the tag - it will show all the items with that tag. If it looks like your type of product write it down. I have a list taped to my computer of what tags to use.

There are two important things that I want to share with you about labeling/tagging your items (taken from the Do and Don't section on Etsy Help: http://www.etsy.com/help/article/483).

• You may use a short descriptive phrase as a tag if it accurately describes your item (for example: "sterling silver," "messenger bag," "steampunk cufflinks").
• You may not stuff multiple words into a single tag that do not comprise a descriptive phrase (for example: "beach water sunset," "handbag purse clutch," "green red blue black." 

Previously you were not to put multiple words in a tag but that changed when relevancy became the default search. So now you can use terms like: 

Statement Necklace

Vintage plate

Children's toque

So if I were to change SageandOlivia's Tags for this item I would use:

1) Jewelry

2) Necklace

3) Stone

4) Statement Piece

5) Chunky necklace

6) Statement necklace

7) Black and White

8) Red Coral

9) Bold Jewelry

10) Mixed Metal

11) Winnipegteam<---- Please tag 25% of you items with these--it helps with treasuries

12) Asymmetrical 

13) Coral Necklace

Bonus

Another thing I would do to SageandOlivia's Shop is add more categories to the shop settings (not more types of items). Since they only have three catergories right now - I would put all the bold chunky statement necklaces in one category and all the long or fine chains in another category. This well help the customer find more of the similar products in their shop quicker. If they come and look at one Statement necklace, they might like to see your other options.