What you will need:
- Some sort of table
- Assuming table is old and needs some work- a sander and some wood stain
- Polyurethane
- Resin
- Some large cardboard
- Colored glass
- A paintbrush (sponge brushes work well)
- Spray adhesive
- Tiles
- Some sort of paint scraper for tool for smoothing out resin
- A large, ventilated work space fairly free of dust, debris and children
Step 1:
Depending on the type of table you have you may need to do some sanding. We scored an all wood table at was pretty gnarly looking for $5 at a garage sale over the summer. Not gonna lie, it definitely needed some work. We sanded it down til it was super smooth and stripped of all the
funky paint/stain that was on it. We then restained with several coats of a dark walnut color and topped that off with some polyurethane to protect it.Step 2:
Our particular table had an indented top. One mistake that we did make was not taking a glue gun and sealing the edges. We ended up with resin leaking through later in the process. So make sure that you seal the edges (especially on an older used table) with a glue gun or something similar.
Step 3:
This step can be completed at any point really and was primarily what my task was on this project. Take your stained glass, throw it in a bag (make sure to layer bags as it will cut through plastic) and smash the hell out of it! This will be for your glass design.
Step 4:
Trace or draw your design onto a piece of cardboard that you have measured out to fit on top of the table. We laid out our black tiles (which we got from the flooring section at Lowes for a decent price) to frame the outside of the top of the table first and then measured the dimensions
for the glass design. I then drew an outline onto the cardboard. I free-handed the question block design onto the board. Here's the kicker. I was not about to try and make the design perfect directly on the table to I drew the design backwards on the cardboard to we could spray adhesive on the back of the glass to make transfer to the table a bit easier.
Step 5:
Get to placing that broken glass! It's a tedious task but oh so worth it when finished! Keep going, you can do it. For me, it helped to work on a different area and switch colors every now and then so I could start to see the light at the end of the tunnel!
Step 6:
We used a piece of white poster board to glue the glass onto and lay on top of the table. This is the easiest way I can think of aside from making the design directly on the table with adhesive as you do it (a VERY risky move). You can always buy different color board or just paint or spray paint the board as well. Anyway, spray the hell out of the finished glass design and carefully place your (already measured out) poster board on top as quickly as possible. Press it down and leave it for a while to the pieces have a chance to set.
Step 7:
At some point we painted the white edges of the black tiles with black acrylic paint. I highly recommend doing this. We also ended up painting the top of the table with the same paint so that there was nothing weird showing through the spaces between the tiles.
Step 8:
Place the posted board down and place the tiles around it. Make sure everything is where you want it. You may have to do some glass adjustments (so make sure you keep extra broken glass for touch ups).
Step 9:
Resin. Resin. Resin. More resin. This is most likely the priciest part of the project (especially assuming you scored a five dollar table!) But it will make your table shine and protect it from anything a 2 year old can do to it! All I can say about this step is make sure you have enough of the stuff, a clean and ventilated work space and some patience! Ours wasn't perfect but it still looks damn good!
The finished product take a little while to dry after the resin but we did this project for less the $100 and quite honestly if you were to even be able to find something like this, I guarantee it would be a whole lot more than that! Worth the time and effort? Yes... especially since we had just moved and had none of our stuff and nothing else to do! So, TADA!
