Living Room Coffee Table

So, there are days when I am sure Danny looks at me and goes, "You are crazy, and you want me to do insane things, but because I love you, I'll do it."

Some of those "crazy" things are actually very normal - like hanging your clothes up, cleaning the bathroom before the grime and soap scum turns green, and vaccuuming before you can see visable chunkies on the floor. Danny could really care less about doing any of that, but because he loves me and he loves me even more when I'm not throwing myself on the bed crying about how messing our apartment is, he picks up and cleans up.

However, there are a few things that he just does because he loves me, a whole lot.

When we moved from South Carolina, Lynn (Danny's mom) gave us her wonderful, sectional couch. It's beautiful - so I don't have to cover it with a cover. And it's cozy and comfortable.

However, it is off-white, so it matched our furniture and the walls perfectly. Well, the OCD in me could not peacefully sit in a living room that looked like a giant cream puff.

I had to do something about this.

Danny's solution was to slap yet another layer of latex paint of my choice color over the ivory latex paint we already had on our coffee table and end tables.

Immediately I imagined plastic looking furniture so thick with paint you could peel it up with your fingernail.

No, we had to do something else.

I wanted it stained. PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE.

So, with my overly optimistic "it will be cinch, you'll finish it in no time" attitude, I talked Danny into starting a 12-step, 6-week process of staining the coffee table. And because he loves me, he used his free time on the weekends to create a new piece of furniture for our living room.

Step 1: Take apart coffee table piece by piece.

Step 2: Coat latex covered table in rubbing alcohol. Then cover with saran wrap and let alcohol loosen latex paint.

Step 3: Chisel & peel & scrape latex paint off coffee table.

Step 4: Repeat steps two and three several times.

Step 5: Sand table until you have sawdust in your ears and up your nose.

Step 6 : Go to Home Depot and buy stain and polyurethane.

Step 7: Paint a small spot on the table and realize you have picked out the wrong color stain.

Step 8: Return stain to Home Depot and buy correct color stain.

Step 9: Stain coffee table again.

Step 10: Let stain dry several days on front porch hoping the neighbors don't want to steal parts and pieces of your living room furniture.

Step 11: Coat table in polyurethane.

Step 12: Assemble coffee table.

Finally, sit and admire your handiwork and let your crazy, crazy wife LOVE her new piece of furniture.