The Coffe Table Saga: Day 1

Hours worked: 4

Money Invested: $13.73….

Total price of the table: 53.75….

Technically it was day two if one is to consider day 1 to be the day I bought it exactly one week from today.  When I took my apartment over from Cory I got as consolation prize to go along with the $2500 security deposit I paid him all the battered furniture as well. WooooooT! Lucky me.  Most of it was livable and it actually came with a rather decent coffee table.

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This table although rather nice did not quite fit my personal taste and was a tad bit too large for the area of my apartment I had designated as my living room.  Given my destitute monetary situation (like a church or an NPO donations are always welcome) I was unable to get a new coffee table (in actuality some body else’s beat up old table) until I sold the old one.  Whenever I need to sell my old crap so I can buy the old crap of others I turn toCraigslist.com.  After nearly three weeks this crazy Chinese dude bought it for $55. This became the budget for the replacement table.

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Once again poking around on Craigslist.com I managed to procure the replacement table, exactly what I wanted only the idiot frat UCSB guys I bought it from decided it would be cool to paint this nice wood coffee table black.  Its not like they did a good job of it either.  Most likely they coated it with about a billion cans of spray paint and no finishing lacquer.  End result was a beautiful table ruined and which every thing you put on top of it stuck like fly paper.

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Seeing a diamond in the rough and over estimating my personal abilities at furniture refurbishing I decided to buy this monstrosity for $40 talked the guy down from $60. Stoked on my recent acquisition I put in my living room and contemplated how wonderful it would look with a nice cherry wood finish after I was to sand all that paint off.  An hour later I remembered just how much work sanding all that paint off was going to be and the long and arduous time it would entail.

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Buyer’s remorse quickly set in.  Thanks to my impetuous nature to fulfill my need for instant gratification I ironically ended up prolonging that need with the amount of time, cash and work it would take to get the table the way I wanted it.   I also forgot to take into account the fact that I have never attempted to refinish a piece of furniture in my life.

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Now that everyone is brought up to speed I decided my torturous efforts at ruining a perfectly good ruined coffee table could be enjoyable to documented here thus starting with today every time I do any work on the table I will post a blog detailing the work and a progress photo.

Day One: Sanding/paint striping

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I honestly thought stripping the paint off the table would take a few hours at best.  I was off the mark by a ton. As it turns out sanding off paint is a tedious job more reminiscent of a nightmare then task.  After four hours of solid sanding with 40-grit paper, my Milwaukee Polisher and a paint scraper I just about completed the entire surface of the table and part of the top molding.  Actually stripping the top went semi fast thanks to the sander and scrapper finishing in only two hours of continuous sanding.  Other then a little chaffing thanks to my shitty skills on the sander, very redolent of my days sanding surfboards, burn throughs galore.   Of course a burn through on a piece of wood furniture you intend to stain is far more taxing and less corrigible.

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Needless to say day one was rather discouraging and frustrating two emotions that lead to my favorite past time Anger!   At this point it appears I have helped add to the destruction of this table instead of salvation.  Now that the job is started it must be ran to completion after all the captain must go down with the ship.  Stay tuned for more misadventures in wrecking a perfectly good coffee table.