DIY Bistro Table

I’ve always wanted to be able to sit outside my place at a little table and eat dinner al fresco or soak up the So Cal rays while drinking coffee. My husband and I live in an apartment, which is surrounded by other apartments, so we don’t really have much outdoor space. However, we do have some concrete in front of our place! What? A girl’s gotta get creative! 🙂 Anyway, I set out to find a little table that could work for my al fresco dining dream…

I found a metal bistro table a few month’s back next to our neighbors dumpster. I quickly snatched it up! Literally. I ran up to it, picked it up and stashed it in our carport! Ha! Little did I realize how beat up this table was (it was dark when I grabbed it okay?).

Here’s the underside of the table. Oh my goodness.

While I was quick to snatch it up, I’ve been much slower in getting to work on it… Sometimes life is just too distracting okay!!

I finally got to work on it this past weekend. While I saw the potential, I did not realize how much work this table was going to be! But again, potential peeps, potential.

When working with rust, always wear protective gear! We purchased some gloves and face masks from Home Depot. We also wore goggles!

We first disconnected the legs from the table and got to work on the metal plate that was completely rusted through.

My husband joined in on the fun as he usually does 🙂 and helped tear off the plate.

Once the plate was removed he went over it with a metal brush and sander and took away more of the rust.

He also got the table sides. It’s pretty amazing what these tools can do!

After removing the rust, we got to work painting. I decided on this Rust-Oleum Chalked Aged Gray paint. We painted the entire table minus the tile top. We avoided painting the tile by taping off the edges with gaffer’s tape (we were out of painter’s tape) and used an old t-shirt to block the tile as we spray painted…

…and then we both realized we didn’t like the look of the paint on the table’s metal rim! We felt it took away from the beautiful tiles. So we decided to sand off the paint to give it more dimension. That took a little more work but it was definitely worth it. We love the look of our table now!

Do the chairs look familiar?! You can read more about those here and here. 🙂

I’m super excited to have a place to sit and relax now! After taking these photos we ended up doing just that. We sat and sipped on wine and just enjoyed this table.