Choo Choo

We hear that word a whole lot in our house these days.  Ever since receiving a simple train set for Christmas, Colton has become obsessed them!  But we had a small problem because although he had a set (actually 2 of them), we didn't have a spare table large enough to host his new-found passion.
Well, last week when I was hitting up Goodwill looking for a frame, this guy was sitting outside just waiting for us:

Except it was still in one piece.  If you can't gather it from the above pictures, it's a train table and for only $18, it became ours!  The train table was in pretty good shape, but I, of course, had to make it ours ya know.  

The first thing I did was take the stickers off (they're already off in the above pictures).  Some of the stickers were pretty easy to get off with Goo Gone, but there were some that just weren't budging.  Well, I read online that by aiming a hair dryer on them for a few seconds it would loosen...and it totally worked!!!  Yay!

Next, I made sure to give the table a good cleaning just using a simple water/vinegar mix and a sponge.    And finally I was ready for some painting.  I had decided just to use the water/grass design that was originally on the table top (I mean why mess with a good thing, right), but I did want to freshen it up a bit.  So, I just took some tape and taped off the water in preparation for some spray paint.

I used two coats of an aqua blue I had left over.  Once they were dry, I removed the tape and used a brush and some leftover green paint (from the kids' bathroom) to paint the grass.

As for the table's base, I had decided stripes would be fun for it.  I laid out the stripes, but didn't like the way they looked so I modified it by having the stripes converge in the middle.  With the tape in place (and pressed firmly on to the wood), I went ahead with a couple quick coats of yellow spray paint (yep, also left over) and was looking at something like this.

I put a couple coats of poly over everything to protect it from Colton's trains, let it all dry over night, put the table back together, and moved it into the playroom.

pardon the missing track piece!

As I expected, Colton was really excited about the new addition.

Oh, and the best part of this little table is that the top flips over to another side, so when Colton inevitably finds his passion for Legos (I think all boys do that, right), we can just convert it to a Lego table...see honey, saving us money left and right!