The entryway table

Since we moved into this house I have been on the lookout for "new to me" furniture that I could turn into a work of art.  My friend, Marcia, and her husband, Bobby had a truckload of furniture.  Some of this furniture needed help.  When Marcia saw this she knew this was something I was looking for and was she ever right!!  I knew instantly what I would do.  Another friend of mine has an Americana entryway table and I wanted to do my own little version because my living room is all about America and travels. The table was a drop leaf table, one side worked perfectly, but the other not at all, I think that is ok because I am using it as an entryway table and not a regular table.  I dreamed of painting the flag on one of the drop-downs and on the other side I planned to do another painting just in case I wanted to change the decor from Americana to something else.  The first thing I did was de-gloss the table and sand it a bit. 

Next was adding a layer of white paint.  My jar of white paint was rather old and while I was opening the jar it just shattered!  I spilled paint all over my carpet and spent about 2 hours cleaning up all that mess.  After that, I painted about 2 layers of white paint on the legs and then brown paint on the leaves and tabletop.  Once all that was dry I free handed a flag. I wanted it rough looking like it was 70 or 80 years old.  Once the flag was dry I dry brushed the whole thing in the same brown paint that I used for the top and I brushed the white legs in the brown too.  On the other side, I freehanded a tree branch and a bird.  Kind of like a cardinal in color, but a completely made-up bird.  Once the bird and the tree were dry I did the same dry brush with brown on top too.  

As I was setting up the table the cat brought me an orange fish which is featured in the photos :)