So last we spoke about the basement, I had found some great pieces for our bar area. A beautiful, counter-height table (that can double as an actual "bar" for seating) and a gorgeous leaner mirror.
The table is amazing... A gorgeous, trestle-style table with a thick, chunky, and beautiful natural top (definitely not touching the top with paint or anything else ever).
Oh, and the price was pretty perfect. The problem? The base was finished pretty awful. At first glance, it's not bad, but from the moment I got a closer look at it in the store, I knew if I got it I would be refinishing/painting it.
So I did.
Here's the before...
Not cute. I'm a big fan of the whole "Restoration Hardware-ish", lightly washed wood look, but this was not it. This photo is of course, not reading true to color, but the base also read very blueish gray. Aside from the color, it was also just actually done very poorly. I love the whole "distressed" look on furniture, but there was a weird breakthrough of black showing beneath the blueish white and it was just plain weird. It looked like someone had made a mistake.
For the basement, we like to keep things much darker and more industrial looking so I knew we wanted it to go dark.
So I put down a huge drop cloth underneath the table, sanded the heck out of the base to be painted, and then used some leftover paint from when I painted our French doors in the foyer black. It's just a latex-based paint in a formula with the primer built in (so it just applies a bit thicker I find), so I figured it would be fine for this part of the table since it's held up so nicely on the doors. I probably wouldn't use this on a table top, but for the base which isn't touched often, I feel like it will hold up really well.
Here she is! So much better I think!! We love how it goes so well with the other dark furniture in the room now. We have a few other little black accent pieces of furniture so it all pulled-together nicely.
I used Black Suede by Behr. It's a soft, almost brown-black.
Oh, and please ignore the dusty floors. haha ;) I had just removed the drop cloth, and I totally didn't notice all the sanding debris and dog hair that flew off of it apparently.
I used an angled brush to get all the little crevices and around the areas where it met the table top. For the rest, I used a medium-sized foam roller. I did two very light coats. It covered SO well. Probably because the paint adhered better because of the crazy sanding. But rather than giving it a "painted furniture" look, it sort of blended right into the wood, still allowing all the character of the wood to show through.
Yes, that is Christmas garland you see there... I couldn't bring myself to remove it because I thought it looked sort of rustic with the pinecones and branches. But in photos? Totally Christmas. Yeah, I probably need to get on removing that.
So that's it for now! I'm so happy with how it turned out. Like I mentioned in my last post about this area, I'm on the lookout for some industrial style stools for it still. Not in a hurry... When I see them, I'll know. :)
We're SO loving how the whole basement is coming together. We still have so much more of it to work on. This whole bar/ living area and the media room is coming together really well so far. The largest room down here is still totally empty though. We're thinking of making it into a game room eventually, who knows. We even have a little unfinished "workout" room that we're wanting to fix up a bit soon, but it's fine for now. SO much to do down here and so much more to share. I'll continue to update you guys in these decor posts! Oh and if you want to see more about the basement, you can check out some older posts (here, here, and here) to get a better idea.
Have a wonderful weekend!! See you Monday!
