Antique Table Makeover Using a Heat Transfer

Just sharing some of the recent furniture makeovers I did for the Home Sale I had on Hurricane Sandy weekend…..

Yup….

You heard me….

My timing is just a teeny tiny bit AWFUL…..
Anyway….not much traffic and NO FURNITURE SOLD…..

Luckily, I had planned to also use my garage and had a tent in the driveway so when it started to rain….we moved under the tent and inside the garage.
But…..
Needless to say, there was a slight rollover effect from the weather!

SIGH……

Oh well……I’m determined to not give up……just yet….

This was one of my favorite pieces from the sale…

An antique table that was missing the veneer top…..

First, I sanded down the top smoothly, filled the cracks and gave it a nice coat of ASCP Pure White.
I chose this graphic from the Graphics Fairy ( I added the PARIS part) and decided to use the heat transfer method.

Have you tried this yet? it’s not hard but it’s not fast. Now, it’s faster than hand painting and if you don’t have a stencil to use, then this is a good option for transfer.
All you need is a tiny iron….like this

Or this handy Martha Stewart tool that I decided to buy. 

I already had a small iron but I wanted this tiny heated point for cutting my own stencils so I decided to buy the MS one too.
A girl can never have too many teeny irons…right?

Laser print your graphic in mirror image. Position it and tape it down. Heat your iron up and start to apply heat. I counted 20 sec in each spot before moving on…….this took about 1/2 hour. As I said….faster than hand painting.

You can easily peel up a spot to see how it’s coming out and lay it back down and apply more heat. I found that heat is the main factor…..not rubbing. When I reached the point that heat alone didn’t seen to be changing anything, I rubbed with the hot iron and found I was able to transfer some more of the graphic.
You are definitely going to get an aged look with this….the entire graphic won’t transfer….but that’s exactly the look I want 98% of the time so that’s good. 

Once the graphic was on, I used some AS dark wax to get the finish I wanted.
Then I moved on to the base of the table.
I had already used a spray primer because I have NEVER had an old mahogany table that did not bleed through ANY kind of paint I have used…..even spray paint. So, spray primer went on first.

Then it was time to try another of the MMS Milk Paint colors! 

I used Typewriter for this table and was super pleased with the result!

Two coats…..the primer kept it from chipping although I did go over it with a scraper to see what happened. 
As a final touch, I added 1890 to the bottom shelf.

Since there was no chipping, I sanded back a few strategic spots and used MMS antiquing wax on the sanded spots and the furniture wax on the rest.

Love how it turned out! Lots of compliments……just no buyer!

I’ll show you a few more things in the next few days!
Be safe!
For those in the hardest hit areas…prayers for quick recovery!