Blue, painted console table makeover: It all started with a leaning mirror!

This post was most recently updated on September 23rd, 2019

If you’re crazy like me, sometimes you might play a little game called The Great Accessories Switcheroo. (Sometimes known as The Great Furniture Switcheroo).

What starts out as a little light bulb idea over a cup of tea like “Ooooh…I betcha that’d look better over there!”…and then…”Let me just try that quickly”… soon becomes a marathon moving session.

‘Cause we all know that once you move one thing, it throws everything else off balance, and before you know it, you’ve got a major ‘project’ going.

Well, I got to thinking the other day, that the tall leaning mirror between my kitchen and dining area really would look nice in a bare corner of my living room.  It was another one of my “Let me just try that quicklys”.  So before ya know it, I’m dragging that big honkin heavy mirror over to the living room.

The only problem was now I had a big fat empty space in the kitchen…and two mirrors in the living room.  So then I decided that the mirror over mantel couldn’t stay there, and I carried that big honkin heavy mirror to the kitchen to fill the bare space left behind by the transplanted leaning mirror.

But then I had another issue.  The mirror from above my mantel is wider than the little console table below it, and just it feels ‘off’. So, of course, as crazy as I am, I search the house for a wider console table, and rob one from the TV room.  What luck, it fit perfectly!

 And, the perfectly fitting console table is also perfectly in balance with the mirror above it – hooray!  End of story, right?  If you’re still with me here and paying attention, you might notice that the photo of this perfectly fitting console table says ‘BEFORE’.  Yup, people, that means my story isn’t over yet.  There’s an ‘AFTER’ coming, lol.

So after a couple of days with this new arrangement, I was getting that familiar, unsettled spidey feeling that something wasn’t right.   Even though the wood stain was a perfect match for my hardwood floors, it felt too dark against my white cabinets.  My kitchen is white with a seaglass backsplash, so that wood just wasn’t workin for me. I didn’t want it to pop; I just wanted it to blend in.

So out came the paint, and the next day, it was looking like this…

The color is Martha Stewart’s Artesian Well mixed as a Behr latex formula with primer built in (’cause personally I like painting furniture with Behr).  After two coats, I distressed the edges a little with some sandpaper.

Now I’m feeling so much better about the new arrangement.  It’s  great little spot for pretty picture frames.  And those two drawers are a great spot to store things I always seem to be looking for…like my keys, pencils for homework, note paper for lunch orders, sunscreen and band aids!

And, as an added bonus, one of my baskets fits perfectly under the table, and it fits all my cookbooks. I did store them in one of my higher kitchen cabinets, but that meant that they weren’t easily accessible.  Now, they’ll be at my fingertips when I get the time and motivation to cook another gourmet meal , like, in 2017 ;-).

The only problem now is that I’m getting that spidey feeling about the leaning mirror in the living room.

Eeeek! I feel another project coming on.

You see, the frame is black, and it’s standing out like a sore thumb against the softer colors in the room.  Nothing that a couple of cans of spray paint and some masking tape can’t fix!  And the cycle continues…

P.S. The moral of this story is: Don’t look for things to change while having a cup of tea.  Keep your head down; look straight ahead.  Drink it through a straw if you have to 😉

Until next time,

 

P.s., I’m sharing this with Beth at