DIY Coffee Table

Over the course of the very long winter I have been doing small projects to spruce up our apartment. One of these was refinishing the coffee table that my grandmother gave us. Here's the before:

I used a spray on paint remover to remove the finish off of the top of the table. I took the lazy way out and only took the finish off of the wood that I was not painting. The spray on was very easy to use, you spray then let it sit for 15 minutes or so. After the time is up you use a scraper to remove the old finish. Be very careful not to get any of the spray on your skin, it causes burns. I repeated the process two times over the whole table then just in spots where the old finish was stubborn. There were a few dings in the wood that I used sandpaper to remove/smooth out.

For the next step I put painters tape around the area's where I did not want paint. For this I chose to leave the center natural wood and paint the rest black.

Here's an indoor shot, it was pretty gray. Not black like I wanted

 Finally found a color closer to black. I don't know why they can't just say "black" as the color. Instead they have to get creative and make up names to make you guess what color it really is. The color we wound up with is more black-blue but it works.

After it was painted I finished it with a clear coat to protect everything.

 Finished product! I like it!

Now it matches everything better!