Sewing table makeover

A few months ago, I rescued a sewing table and machine from the curb. The machine itself worked fine, but someone once upon a time had the brilliant idea to cover the wood with three different designs of wood-grained contact paper. Contact. Paper. Over the whole thing. I dove into peeling contact paper before I thought to take a ‘Before’ pic, but here are a few ‘Almost Before’ pics.

Getting the contact paper off was a challenge in and of itself because the vinyl was old and brittle. The bigger problem turned out to be the adhesive left behind. In the pics you might notice a big bottle of Goo Gone. Ignore it. It didn’t work at all.

I discovered that regular paint stripper works very well at removing that adhesive! I tried both the toxic-fume kind and the orange environmentally-nicer stuff and both worked well. The orange stuff takes longer to work, and the sun went down before it was quite finished…

SewingTableDuring

 

Once it was all stripped, I scrubbed down every surface with wet washcloths, then let it all dry overnight.

 

After drying, my honey primed and painted it for me! The pieces sat in the garage for a while, drying and de-fuming (I love the ease of spray-paint but I hate the smell that lingers for weeks), and waiting for me to decide whether or not to re-use the original drawer pulls (I didn’t).

Finished project below! I didn’t need another sewing machine, but this is already in it’s new home in my bedroom. Next weekend will be a sewing project!