It's A Long Story: ikea hack

I hope you had a great weekend! We spent ours finishing up our coffee table and end tables. I LOVE the way they turned out and I'm so excited to share them with you today!

We got our coffee table and end tables from Ikea about four years ago. They were cheap, and they did their job, but the lack/laminate finish was starting to chip and bubble. I didn't really want to spend a lot of money on new tables, and I had seen some great makeovers where people added wood planks to their tables. I really liked the way those looked, totally my style. When Melanie from Making It In The Mitten shared her coffee table makeover, I convinced my husband we should do the same to ours. And when he got a miter saw for Christmas, he agreed (I think it was just so he had an excuse to use his new saw, but whatever works).

Last weekend we re-did the coffee table and this weekend we did the end tables to match.

I didn't take any photos of the process of doing the coffee table because I was too excited and just wanted to get it done. But don't worry, I took some pics when I did the end tables and the process is exactly the same.

First, I took the table apart and lightly sanded it all with 120 grit sand paper. I also sanded all of the wood planks on both sides and the ends. I kind of rounded the ends so they weren't rough.

Then I cleaned all the wood off and painted one coat of primer and two coats of white paint. I just used paint and primer that I already had at home. I let them dry overnight and then added one coat of clear polyurethane to protect the paint from chipping.

I used Minwax stain that I already had at home to stain the boards. I let those dry over night too. And of course I decided to do all of this in winter with a foot of snow of the ground, so I did all of this in my basement.

After everything was dry, I put the table back together and had Kevin help me screw the boards to the top of the table.

At first we just used wood glue to attached the planks to the coffee table. We put large stacks of magazines on it over night to weigh it down while the glue dried. It held ok until Kevin and Admiral were messing around and hit the end of the table. The boards came unglued. So we decided to screw the planks to the table. We used black screws which blend in pretty well with the table and I'm very happy with the way they turned out.

And now for the fun part, all of the pictures!

I took the pics of the end table last night, so the lighting is horrible--sorry!

I am so happy with the way this turned out! I think it makes the Ikea tables look a lot nicer. I'm hoping this allows us to get a few more years out of them :)

If you're looking for other DIY coffee table ideas, check out this post: Drink in These Decadent DIY Coffee Table Ideas.

Oh andI have to share this photo. I was taking "before" photos of the coffee table and Admiral decided to photo bomb me. I showed my husband this picture and we were both cracking up. Hope you get a kick out of it too :)