My Flea Market Flip
Hi Everyone,
Sharing my flea market flip. I purchased an antique end table for $10 at the Allaire State park flea market. Anyone in the Monmouth county, New Jersey area knows it takes place one weekend in September and another weekend in October. Different weekends every year due to the weather. I did buy more than just this end table. I bought a glass/wood 3 piece canister set and a beautiful rustic vase. The fair has tons of furniture, lighting, art work and jewelry. For the most part its like a live facebook marketplace and on a beautiful day its quite enjoyable. Most of the pieces there are either estate pieces they couldn’t sell or family members pieces. I came across the end table and purchased immediately. It was in somewhat good condition and only 10 dollars? who could beat that. Me ; in need of an end table thought I would really enjoy doing a little project.
The table had, what looked like surface scratches but some deeper than others. I took the table home and started working on it in my garage. I lightly sanded with 220 grit sand paper then wiped down the dust down with a lukewarm rag. After, I filled the deeper scratches with plastic wood filler , waited for it to dry and lightly sanded to level out the top of the end table.
After some careful consideration of either going with chalk paint (which I worked with before) or milk paint. I went back and forth and researched differences and read through other blogs to see what others have experienced and made my decision. Milk paint is much lighter of a consistency than chalk paint and with a smaller project like this it wouldn’t take weeks vs days. Milk paint is more of a watery milky base and coats very nicely. I advise you test it out before painting a whole piece to see if this is the look you are going for.
Once the table is smooth to the touch, I wiped it down again with a rag and began on my first coat of milk paint. I painted 3 coats on the end table and set the table on a compound bucket to bring it off the floor so I can easily paint all around. When I started on this table I was working full time, touching on the end table on my days off. When I started to finally paint the table I found out that dan and I were 6 weeks pregnant a beautiful surprise. So making myself as comfortable as possible while painting and feeling all the beginning symptoms of pregnancy, I didn’t want to sit on the concrete floor. Either way its always a good idea to prop your furniture pieces off the floor to get in all the nooks and crannies. I absolutely love the way this table came out and recommend using milk paint and will definitely use it again on another project soon! Watch my video below for the results!
