Puzzled

How many of you like jig-saw puzzles? I like them although I had not worked any for a few years. Personally, I think they are great way to slow down the frantic pace of everyday life and they provide the added benefit of working the brain. My daughter gifted me a 1000 piece puzzle this past Christmas. A 1000 pieces...Oy!

 One problem with puzzles- where can you work on them? I don't have a dedicated game room or game table. It was very annoying to have the puzzle on my dining table then have to move it when we wanted to eat dinner. I improvised at first, using 2 pieces of posterboard to carefully move and cover the in progress puzzle. That too, soon gave way to annoyance.

Another problem-my dining table is good for a quick meal, but it isn't comfortable enough to sit at for a few hours, hunched over while working on a puzzle. Although my dining table does have a nifty hidden storage tray which was great for storing the puzzle box, even though it is supposed to be used to store placemats.

I researched puzzle trays and tables and holy moly are they are expensive. ($70-$200)  I am wayyyy to cheap to drop money on those. I suppose if I had nice wooden puzzles and worked the puzzles daily maybe, just maybe, I would consider on of those fancy puzzle trays/ tables.

I rooted around the garage to see what I could DIY. I found some luan board, cardboard and an old, very oversized picture frame.

This is my first attempt to create a puzzle tray. Though not bad for 10 minutes worth of work and free materials! As you can see it is slightly larger width than my dining table.

It is nearly the same size as the chaise on my couch

But it tucks away under the couch quite nice. Which is good because I may be working on this puzzle for a very, VERY long time.

 I have several other frames, more luan board and plywood. I would like to make something smaller, with storage, and more portable. I may need to buy some dowel rods and I definitely need some felt fabric so the puzzle doesn't slide. Anyone have any nifty ideals for a puzzle tray or table?

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Faux Hammered metal table Tutorial

I wrote about this project in my Look for Less#1 post.

I went from this

to this 

Talk about Cha-cha-Changes!

Here's what you need:

Table

paint

sandpaper

woodputty

super glue

hammer

drill/ screw driver

needle nose pliers

nail head trim/ trim strip

PATIENCE!!

This is about a $5-$7 plant stand that I bought a dollar type store 12 years ago. Maybe longer. It had definitely see better days. I am not going to give step by steps pics on everything because some of it is just common sense type stuff.

1. Flip the table over and use your drill or screwdriver to remove the screws. Mine were pocket screws through the feet. Place the screws in a little container or ziploc baggie until project is complete so you don't lose them. And hopefully--unlike me-you  DON'T misplace the bag. sheesh!

2. Once the screws were removed, the feet were removed from the base plate and base plate removed.

3. The legs were simply unscrewed from the top plate.

4. All the pieces were sanded with 100 grit sandpaper and tacked off. Any major gouges, cracks etc were filled with wood putty allowed to dry, and re-sanded until smooth. Tack off the dust from final sanding.

5. Next comes the paint.

6.I began with silver.

Um No--big fat fail 

7. Well thats's not gonna work. Let's try copper.

Well crap-o-la. I don't like this either.

8. (Picture me squinting and thinking reeaallyy hard) hmmmmmm, what if I mix the paints?

Hey! I kinda like this! (Light bulb moment)

9. For the table base and table top I spayed the entire surface with a nice chocolate/ cappuccino brown first. Because I knew it would need the appearance of dimension.Then I very lightly began spraying the metallic paints, layering them until I had a look that I liked. And I (gasp!) did not wait for them to dry between coats.

Both pieces have the same color but it is not accurately reflected in these pics sorry!

10. Once I achieved the overall look, I let the pieces dry overnight and re-assembled the table.

11. I added the nailhead trim using the nh strip. You hammer a nail in every 5th nailhead. Since the very last piece of the NH trim was not affixed with a nail, I used a drop of superglue to "fix it" in place. It probably wasn't going to move but I wanted to make sure it didn't.

I will tell you achieving the layered/ burnished metal look was not easy. It was hard to set the paint cans down and walk away. To get the striations I basically flicked my wrist and twisted  the table on a make shift lazy-susan as I was spraying the paint. 

It almost has a "marbling" effect

I spent maybe an hour a day over a period of 4 days working on this.  Unfortunately none of my dogs or cats can work my camera so there are no pics for me to demonstrate this technique. The nail head trim was kind of a PITA (pain-in-the-ass). I can't imagine how bad it had been if I actually had to hammer individual ones in. I managed to kill 4 of the nails AND MY THUMB TWICE! Which is why the needle nose pliers are a GREAT tool to use to hold the nails in place while you hammer! Um duh--wish I had thought of it sooner.... . I had a little difficulty keeping the trim centered on a rounded edge. On a scale of 1to 10 with 1 being easy-peasy and 10 being WTH???? I would give this a difficulty of 5 to 6.

Cost

table=free

paint=$6.47 for the cappucino. The hammered metallics were from my paint hoard

Nail head trim $19.99 for 5 yards for BUT I only used 18 inches=$2.52

All other tools/ supplies were free because we already had them on hand.

Other than that I luurrvvee it! It is very cool and unexpected. Whatcha think?