Coffee table redo!

(ignore the dog butt in the background)

After moving into a new house--our first house--it's really hard not to dive into a million projects at once.  But there's so much to do, and so many possibilities that I can't help but translate a bare wall or naked windows into a trip to Joanns.  But first things first--we needed a coffee table. 

So now, a fresh start.  An empty living room.  But. . we just forked over a down payment, put in wood floors, bought a washer an dryer, and painted everything.  What?  No money left for the Pottery Barn coffee and end tables I had my eye on?  Damn. . I guess it's off to Craigslist.

So I searched and searched all over the Jacksonville and Saint Augustine furniture classifieds.  Sorted through the "most comfortable couch in the world"s, free Ikea tables and "must see" plaid recliners.  I finally found a great set of three tables from a very sweet lady (who knew they existed on Craigslist?!).  For  $125 I had a coffee table and two side tables ready to go.

It was actually in better shape than this, I just got a little too excited and started sanding before I snapped a 'before' pic.

So I took to Pinterest. for some inspiration and came up with an idea.

First, I sanded down the bottom half of the table.  No need to labor over the table top since I was going to be covering it anyway.  Then I primed everything with a white spray primer.  I did two very light coats, sanding with a "between coats" sanding block between each.

Next, I painted it white(all except the table top, remember).  I did three coats of a white semi-gloss, sanding between each.

Then, I roughed it up a bit.  I used a medium-grit sandpaper and 'antiqued' the table by sanding any sharp edges or places of normal wear and tear.  This allowed the darker finish to show through in just the right places to give the table that rustic look I was going for.

After that I rubbed on three coats of polyurethane with an old rag, sanding (again) between each coat.  The reason I rubbed the polyurethane on as opposed to brushing it on is because I didn't want a very shiny look to my 'antique' table.

Okay so now for the table top--I wanted it to look like a farmhouse plank table, so I bought some 1x6x6 boards from Lowes and cut them to the size I needed.  I wanted the plank table top to be exactly the same size as the existing one. Here's me looking right at home with Big Art's saw.

I sanded and sanded those things until they were smooth and splinter-free.  I stained them with a nice dark walnut and rubbed on 3 coats of polyurethane--sanding between each coat.

I nailed those babies down right on top of the existing table top (easy!).  Since I painted the sides of the old table top white, it looked like it was supposed to be there, not like I just got lazy and nailed some boards to the top of a table:) 

Then I repeated all those steps twice more for the end tables and for under $200 I have three rustic farmhouse living room tables that fit our style perfectly.  And lucky for me, it's supposed to look imperfect!

I am no expert, this is the first time I've done anything like this.  So there's probably easier/better ways to do this. But this is how I did it:)