Paris Apartment Shabby Chic Tiered Side Table

Table prior to makeover (side view above and view from front below). As you can see, dark and drab! Surely not something I would have in my house. It is however, a solid piece of maple furniture. Couldn't pass it up, as the store had priced it at $4.00. Even if my project was a complete failure, I did not have much to lose.

I wanted to try my hand at repurposing furniture. This is my first attempt. I spent many hours trying to figure out what I was going to do and how to do it. I love shabby chic and wanted to create that look. I happened across chalkpaint and even a recipe for chalkpaint using powdered calcium carbonate. Spent an afternoon going from one health food store to another, you have to understand that I live in a pretty rural area, so I traveled quite some distance just to get to one store, let alone three other stores. Fortunately two stores were in close proximity of each other and then the last two stores were also in close proximity to each other. Came up short in all four places. Just happened to go to Walgreens as I was leaving the second town to go home, defeated. I happened to pass Tums and stopped dead in my track with a light going off in my brain. Tums is calcium ..... I wonder what other ingredients are in Tums. Can you believe - it was calcium carbonate. Oh my goodness! Now I was in a quandry, as I needed powder and also Tums are flavored and colored. My mind went into high gear and I decided to buy the peppermint Tums, as they were white. I thought that I could put the Tums in a plastic bag and smash with a hammer to create a powder. A few minutes later I thought about my Cuisinart food processor, after all it could probably powder the Tums in no time!

Viola! The final product. Two coats of homemade chalkpaint and a freezer paper French label (thanks to Graphics Fairy, LLC) transfer burnished on the bottom tier. Does not even look like the same table,my husband doesn't believe me that the before picture is the same table. Not bad for a first project and an unbelievable cost of under $10.00.

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