from dusty to dazzling

As the song goes, there are a few joys I count as "my favorite things": coca cola in glass bottles, spontaneous laughter, the way my dog cocks his fluffy ears at an inquisitive angle when desiring a nibble of whatever I'm eating, cooking something adventurously new or comfortingly old, and painting furniture.  I love taking something with promise and making it one-of-a-kind.  Here's my latest project: a coffee table my good friend Ashley picked up for me at Goodwill for the handsome sum of $2.50.  I've been looking for a coffee table, preferably something with a geometric, Moroccan feel to it and she discovered this diamond in the rough.  Here  it is when I first received it.

 And here is it after a bit of cleaning up, without the glass top.  I think it's lovely as is, but a bit bulky feeling all being brown wooden.  So, I decided to jazz it up a bit!

 Inspired by this beautiful Spanish cabinet from the 1940's, I decided to play up the star-like shapes on the top of the table and make it look a bit like an old Moroccan door.

After multiple coats of paint, gold gilding, distressing the wood and then cleaning the heck out of that glass, here's the finished product!  (Hayden's checking it out.)  It actually looks a bit Egyptian to me, and I love it.

Doesn't the golden top look like a bit like gilded stars?

I'm really happy with it.  And there's just something so cathartic about painstakingly adding coppery gold paint brushstroke by brushstroke (yes, I had to use a teeny brush on the top — whew!) and transforming it into something totally new.  What a rewarding little project.