Thrift Store Tray Makeover

A forgotten and unfinished thrift store serving tray is finally getting a completed makeover for this month’s ‘Do It Over’ Designers challenge.

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I found this dated looking serving tray in a thrift store last year.  I thought it would be a good item for my vendor booth with a makeover of course.  But once I started working on it,  I just didn’t like how it turned out  – the first time. 

So I left it in the craft room for months, untouched and unfinished for months.  Almost every time I would walk in to my craft room I would have to move it out of the way.  And each time I would think about how I needed to return to this forgotten little serving tray and give it one more chance.

For this month’s ‘Do It Over’ Designers blog hop, I decided to finally give it another try.

 

 

This post is part of the ‘Do It Over’ Designers link party.  A group of designers who take something old and/or unused and ‘do it over’ into something new. These items can be found in closets, barns, garages, yard sales, thrift stores, you name it!

 

Sometimes you have to return to a project at a later time to finally get it right.

This is how it looked when I pulled it back out of the craft room for this challenge. 

 

 

Only the inside had been changed from how it originally looked.  I will have to show you that part below since I can’t seem to find a full photo of exactly how it looked originally when I brought it home and before I painted the inside to cover the dated flowers. 

But I do have a couple of photos of the process of painting over the dated flowers.

 

 

 

 

As you can see, the inside bottom of the tray had these faded and dated looking flowers.  Months ago I had sanded it down and painted over it in a gray chalk paint.

 

 

 

Then I had painted a simple modern stencil down the middle of the tray. It looked better.  But I just wasn’t convinced the piece was “finished”. 

 

I’m sure everyone can relate to when you work on a piece, make some improvements, but can’t decide if those improvements were worth it or not.  You may also struggle too with the realization that if you keep working on it without knowing what to do next, then you take a chance of ruining it all together.

So I stored it away for when I had a bit more inspiration for the piece.

 

Tray Makeover Take 2

I pulled it out again for this challenge and took a hard long look at it and asked myself several questions.  What did it need?  What was wrong with the look of it now?  Why didn’t I like it yet?

In the end, I finally figured out the color of the wood wasn’t quite right with the gray paint.  So I decided to give it a white wash effect.

A white wash effect is just adding some watered down white paint to the wood, letting it dry for a few minutes, and wiping off the excess to leave behind a more textured and aged looking wood.

I added 2 teaspoons of white acrylic paint to 4 teaspoons of water and mixed them well.  The ratio is usually a 1:2 mix for white washing paint.

I then started adding the paint mixture to the wood frame of the tray, allowed it to dry for a few minutes, and wiped off the excess.

 

 

Some areas I had to treat it twice with the white wash paint to get the look I wanted, but this process worked perfectly to age the wood of the tray.

I let the tray sit for a couple of days for the paint to cure and dry completely.

 

 

After applying the white wash layer and allowing it to dry, I knew the tray probably needed a coat of either acrylic or wax to seal it.  Since I finally liked the rustic look of the tray makeover, I decided to use some clear furniture wax out of my stash to apply as the top coat on the tray. 

 

 

The last step for this serving tray makeover was to apply a thin coat of clear furniture wax to the entire piece and wipe off any excess after a few minutes. 

 

 

 

This little dated looking serving tray now has a new look and is ready for someone else to enjoy.

 

 

 

Be sure to visit all of the other bloggers who participated this month in the ‘Do It Over’ Designers challenge.

 

Pandora’s Box

Purple Hues & Me

Southern Sunflowers

Interior Frugalista

The Apple Street Cottage

Birdz of a Feather

Cloches & Lavender

Exquisitely Unremarkable

Little Vintage Cottage

Modern on Monticello

Sum of Their Stories

 

 

Hugs,

Matthew 5:7 “God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”