#cheaphometricks: table pimping for less

Last week I wrote about the new Pretty Pegs table legs that you can buy to transform your ordinary Ikea table into something extraordinary. 

This week, it's still my most read post – and the legs are lovely, clever things. The downside? They aren't cheap. So if you're cash-poor but DIY-enthusiasm-rich, here's some inspiration for taking on the home-made version of that project.

Despite travelling with a man and a van from one side of London to the other, this table instantly became surplus to requirements when my boyfriend moved in with me. I was sad, as I'd always liked it in his flat and was all up for a kitchen table refresh. But so was he – and so my old table (£15 from a charity shop as many years ago, and ready for a new home I had hoped) remained in situ.

Meanwhile, we needed to find a home for this monster. A fine lump of pine, though (and I wasn't the first to say it), a touch on the 1990s side of fashionable... But I could see it had potential, even if my boyfriend couldn't.

Fortunately, so could my friend Holly (whose inventive budget craft skills I've covered here previously). She was about to move from a rented, semi-furnished flat into her first home in Lewes – minus a dining table. And so the table awaited its new home: Holly hadn't even got the keys by the time she'd mentally transformed it with a pot of Farrow and Ball water-based gloss in Charlotte's Locks. Now, a few months into the new pad and her vision is a reality.

And doesn't it look brilliant?

It does make you think twice about paying £160 for a new – though very beautiful – set of ready-painted table legs, doesn't it?

The colour choice was inspired by the shelves on the other side of this open plan room (seen above), which she'd already decided to paint in the same shade, and the text in the Happy Day print (which you can find at the Calm Gallery).

And the new legs also go rather well with the apple-print oilcloth (clipped onto her one-year-old's end of the table, perfect for food-throwing and sticky fingers).

Nothing 1990s about it now, is there?


Post by Kate