Anthropologie Knock-off Table

Recently I submitted a project to Creating With The Stars Contest, and although I didn't get picked as one of the contestants, I am still going to do projects for all four rounds, just for the fun of it.

The first weeks is KNOCK-OFFS, which is one of my most favorite things to do. I saw this awesome cabinet at Anthropologie and thought it would be fun and a challenge to recreate.

I found this side table on Craigslist for $20 and talked them down to $15. 

She said it was solid wood, and it appeared to be, but you never really know what you'll find until you strip it down. Stripping is my least favorite part of the refinishing process, so I started on it as soon as I brought it home just to get it out of the way. 

I put a thick layer of citristrip on and after 30 minutes, the black paint came off really easily. 

However, with stripping paint, the easy part is getting the bulk off. The most painstaking and tedious process is when you've stripped it down but there are corners, crevices, and tough spots that don't come off so easily. Below you see most of the paint is off, but there's still lots of gunk and stain from the original finish. 

 So after I got all the excess Citristrip off and the piece was completely dry, I broke out the sander and sanded it down as much as I could.

Meanwhile I was also working on removing the wicker front of the door so that the wood rings would lay flat. It was simply stapled in, so I was able to pry it off with a screwdriver pretty easily. I then stripped down the door to the natural wood. 

After the door was stripped down, I cut a 1/4" thick piece of wood to fit the hole (where the wicker was) so that it was flush with the door. 

I took some dried wood from my mom's wood pile and had my brother-in-law saw 1/4" thick rings to place on the front. I was a little disappointed that there was a black dot in the center of each piece of wood, and also that the rings were smaller than the inspiration, but I didn't have any other dried wood branches. It was also free, and my alternative was to buy wood rings from Michaels, which I anticipate would have been about $15 (five bags of rings at $3 each.) I didn't want to double my costs, so I went ahead with with I had.  

  Anyone know if black spots indicate the beginnings of tree decay? 

I then stained everything except the wood rings with Minwax Golden Pecan and let it dry. 

I added the wood rings with wood glue and after the glue dried I stained the rings, using a polyurethane mixed with a tiny bit of Golden Pecan. I noticed that the rings soaked up the color when I did a test stain, so I decided to dilute it. 

I found this copper-ish drawer pull at Lowes for $2, and although it doesn't match the inspiration, it looks nice, and that's good enough for me. 

And here's the finished product. 

This project cost $21 ($15 for table, $4 for stain, $2 drawer pull) verses the Anthropologie table which is $398.