Pinterest Challenge

    I am beyond excited to that I have a project to share with you as part of the Spring Pinterest Challenge put on by Sherry from Young House Love, Katie from Bower Power, Emily from Sparkle Meets Pop, and Renee from Red Bird Blue.  The Pinterest Challenge is a one created by Katie Bower to get us to stop pinning and start doing...and then start pinning again.  Oh, the vicious cycle!

 

    This isn't the first time I've created something that I've been inspired by on Pinterest, but this is the first time that I have blogged about it, so pinch me because I'm really excited! The search for the perfect project was an easy one.  I had a side table sitting in our living room that I recently purchased from Home Goods (or "The Goods" as I lovingly call that heavenly place).  We needed one desperately, as we have no space for a coffee table and needed a place to put our drinks and snacks while watching our endless amounts of DVR.  The table met all the physical requirements that we needed, but unfortunately it was in a shade of blue that didn't really coordinate with anything else in the room.  I knew that I wanted to paint it, but I also knew that we needed something on top because we're not really the best about using coasters and I didn't want to paint the table only to mess up the finish with water marks.

 

    Enter my inspiration from Allison of Dream a Little Bigger.  She had a dinged up table that she loved but just needed a little fixing.  So she corked the top!

 

    

    I loved this solution for us.  It would prevent water marks and eliminate the need for coasters.  So I bought a roll of cork at Michael's and a $2 can of clearance spray paint at Joann's and got to work.  This wasn't my first spray paint project, but I definitely learned a couple of big lessons during this one:

1) Primer really is your friend.  

2) Always have more spray paint than you think you need.

    Now in this case, I really had no excuse to for the fact that I ran out of spray paint.  I mean, there were several cans of white spray paint on sale for $1.97 at Joann's and I walked out with one?!  Perhaps the fact that they lock it up there makes me feel like I should buy only responsible amounts at a time?  Thank goodness I already owned white primer that matched so I was able to squeak by with the two together.  In all honesty, I should have primed first like a smart DIYer would have done, but in the heat of the moment I just got excited and started spraying without really thinking.  Plus, I was saving my primer for a big summer project I have lined up!  But it would have saved me some major time in this case.

    Anyway, back to the how-to.  I am blessed with an extremely handy husband who's way more into details than I am when it comes to things like this, so it was his job to cut the cork into the perfect hexagon to fit atop the table.  He first cut some brown craft paper to size to serve as a template for the cork.

      
    He got out the good old X-acto knife and got to work.  Then I used some Krazy Glue and spray adhesive to attach the cork to the table.  See my super-professional system of weighing down the edges to ensure good adhesion?

 

   

    Here's a close-up of the finished cork top.

 

     And here it is in action!

     It was so simple that I kind of want to try it on something else now.  Thanks for stopping by!