doors to eat off of.

we really hate to see anything go to waste.

so when a couple of old doors were getting the boot at ryan's place of employment,

he immediately knew that i would want them.

that together we could come up with something brilliant to use them for.

and although i was surprised when he randomly brought home two unfinished doors,

and even a little annoyed when he plunked them in front of our front door.

now i am oh-so glad that he did.

and happy that he knows me well enough to gather junk from almost anywhere.

and even bring it home from work as a gift.

when he first brought these two home i was kind of in shock.

i stared at him, then the doors, then at him again.

his explanation was "i thought you could use these for something."

and then he left.

with two raw doors leaning against the wall blocking or entrance.

i was baffled.

did he have something in mind? {no.}

was he replacing some of our older doors? {no.}

he just thought i could use them for something.

and use them we did!

that night we decided a buffet table for our dining room would be grand.

so we drew up some quick plans, and ryan set out building it.

he finished his part in one afternoon.

and the painting was left up to me.

it took me much longer to finish my part of things.

first i had to select the color.

on the one hand we had some white paint leftover from this project.

{but white again? was that boring?}

on the other hand a soft cream would be a similar but slightly different take.

and on the far other hand i was even considering a light shade of green.

we went with white.

because we often play it safe with colors.

and because we often play it cheap with money.

and because white paint we already had.

so here is how it all went

from this:

to this:

first, because the table was so long,

i purchased 8 bulbous legs from our local hardware store.

ryan attached them and then i sanded all the rough edges down.

next i filled the screw holes with spackling and let that dry overnight.

then i applied a very thin coat of oil based primer.

after that it was 3 additional {and thin} coats of antique white semi-gloss latex paint.

we decided to forgo a polyurethane finish because we may decide to change the color, and don't want to sand everything down again.

and because it's function is more of an occasional table,

we think it will hold up just fine without.

{although we may re-change our minds and add a polyurethane coat after all.}

and finally the absolute hardest step.

the step that drives me completely crazy and i'm always tempted to skip.

but i don't.

because this also happens to be the most important step.

we waited.

a couple hours in between each coat and a solid 3 days afterwords.

this step allows everything to cure and harden.

{it's actually only 90% cured at this point, and will take a full 30 days to completely stabilize. but we haven't had any problems using furniture after about 3 days.}

and voila!

a buffet table that gives us much needed extra storage for things like our extra set of dinnerware, daily place mats & napkins.

it also holds things that are pretty {like our cake stands.}

and things that are rarely used {like our fondue set.}

and provides a lovely surface on which to serve food.

we absolutely love it.