Weekend Project #1: Clown Trunk

I had hoped for this to be the first post in a series of tutorials about our weekend home improvement projects. Well, it still may be that, but it's not starting off like I had planned.

You see, we had been wanting a coffee table but hadn't been able to find the right shape/size (albeit we didn't look very long/hard). Our couch is a sectional, but not the typical L-shape (it's more of a hexagon), making it difficult to find the right coffee table.

I had (what I thought to be) a brilliant idea - use the toy chest my mom had used in her classroom. There was a slight problem in that it was covered in clowns, but I felt that would be easily overcome with some paint.

Here comes the tutorial part:

Our starting point

 

We painstakingly taped off all the metal trim.

Primed it so the clown wouldn't peek through the final coat

Spray painted over the primer

Took off the tape and brought it in

It may seem like the project went well. After all, I suppose it did go as planned except for the color we ended up with. That was definitely not the color we had in mind. I mean, does it look anything like the spray paint can lid in the second picture? NO.

After all that, Levi decided we should paint it green (it wasn't me this time!) and I'm not even sure I want to mess with it anymore. Maybe we'll just keep looking for the perfect coffee table.