Sewing Table Transformation

One of the things I enjoy most about my job is being able to take a piece that most people wouldn’t take a second glance at and give it a new life. I mean how awesome is it to take a piece someone was thinking about throwing away and completely transform it so they can use it in their home for years to come? Not to mention the fact they can say its a one of a kind piece is pretty awesome too! Recently I had the honor of doing this for a client on a sewing table that had belonged to his mother and had since been damaged. Take a look at the before and after pictures! Can you believe the transformation? If you want to know my secrets then keep reading...

I was pretty lucky with the sewing table, I was able to use my artistic freedom on this piece which made it that much more fun to work on. (If you are a fellow painter, you know how important artistic freedom is..if not just take my word for it!) When our client dropped off  the sewing table, I’m not gonna lie, it was in rough shape, age and different weather conditions had not been kind to the table. Our client explained that the piece had once belonged to his mother, and was very sentimental to him. He wanted it restored and painted to honor his mother and to help him preserve the memories he had with her. I knew how important it was to restore the table to its former glory but it wasn’t going to be easy. The top was warped, pieces were broken or missing but I knew it wasn’t impossible to fix (I had a vision people and nothing would stop me from making my vision come true!)

    Before I could even think of picking up a paintbrush to bring my vision to life, there was quite a bit of prep that I had to do first. Because of the age and condition of the piece, there were structural problems that needed to be addressed. I reattached loose pieces and steadied the table by adding Bondo to the bottom of each leg. Once the structure of the table was sound, I began to clean my piece. To clean the piece, I used my trusty TSP. I mean this stuff cleans like no other! (If you want to learn more about TSP check out our blog post here). Once the piece was clean, I started working on the top. ​

The next step was to fix the top. I had to remove all of the venner and fixed what was remaining with bondo. ​

Once that was done I was ready to add my details. I had a vision of using birds as the pattern for the top of the table, however I decided to go with a more Art Deco stencil because it matched the piece better as the table was from the 1930s. Next,  came the Joint Compound to create a raised stencil. To do this, I placed the stencil on the top of the piece and instead of painting the stencil, I filled it with joint compound, applied it with a spatula and allowed it to dry.

Ok the tough part was done, the top was restored and that's what I was most concerned about. Now it was time to paint the piece. I had decided to use a beautiful muted mauve color from Fusion Mineral Paint, “Damask.” (Great News for anyone who wants to try “Damask” Fusion Mineral Paint has decided to bring this color back and we will have it in stock soon!) This colors adds the perfect amount of elegance to the piece and not to mention it pairs perfectly with the other I planned on using. (Don’t worry, I’ll let you know what they are later in the post) 

Next came the the legs, I painted them in Damask but I felt like that wasn’t enough, I had to do something more. So I decided to match the vision I had for the top of the sewing table. I took Fusion Mineral Paint’s “Coal Black”  and painted from the ground to about ¼ up each table leg. I just loved the contrast between the mauve and black! At this point, I was getting pretty excited because my vision was starting to take shape! (isn’t that the best feeling when you have an image in your head and you can see it coming together right before your eyes?)

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Once the top was dry, I painted the entire top in Fusion Mineral Paint “Chocolate” and then went over the raised stencil in Fusion Mineral Paint’s Metallic “Pale Gold” (I just love gold, if you couldn’t tell from my other pieces which you can see here) The contrast between the gold and chocolate was just so perfect! Next , we had to clean the old sewing machine that had been hiding in the table. Keep in mind this sewing machine had not seen the light of day in a VERY long time. To restore this to its original beauty, we first used our favorite blue shop towels (Remember how much we love them? You can find out why from our blog post here)

Anyway we used our favorite blue shop towels to clean off the machine. Then we went back over the entire piece with just a small amount of Hemp Oil from Fusion Mineral Paint. This allowed the sewing machine to shine once again. 

​I really loved how this piece turned out and most importantly I was honored to be able to a restore a piece that meant so much to our client and to help him preserve the memories of his mother. Want to hear about our other furniture transformations? Let us know in the comments below.