Mid Mod Inspirations: Music Side Table

For about six months now I've been handling social media for a local store called Pickers Paradise. The name alone makes you want to go, doesn't it? Pickers is part of a larger business called Reliable Estate Services LLC. They are an estate liquidation company, and when a loved one is dying or has died, they come in and clear out the home and clean it up so that the family can focus on spending their last days with their loved one and/or not have to worry about the home while they are grieving. Picker's Paradise is the store front where they sell all the furniture and household items obtained from the clean-outs they do. It's a really cool place, a lot like a thrift store, but not quite.

Attached to Picker's Paradise is a cool little store called Finders Keepers by Monica. Monica is an awesome and talented interior designer and her shop is full of beautiful new and vintage items. Her favorite thing is refinishing furniture and she is insanely good at it. In fact, when people come to me wanting me to refinish a piece for them, I refer them to her. I can't handle the pressure of refinishing something for someone, but she is a pro at it.

For the past month now I've also been helping them with pricing and tagging the new merchandise that comes in, which is my own kind of paradise! Since I'm in the store more often I get to see all the new stuff that comes in, and my mind is always working on how I could fix up this piece, or put this with that to make something new. It's a great way to keep my creativity flowing!

A couple of weeks ago this small side table came into the store, and around the same time one of the owners mentioned that they had gotten in a bunch of old piano sheet music. So I decided to put the two together and turn this boring little guy into a fun music table.

All photos in this post courtesy of my lame iPhone camera.

Monica at Finder's Keepers sells a great brand of chalk paint called Country Chic, so naturally I wanted to use it for this project. With chalk paint, you CAN paint on a wood surface without sanding or priming. But I decided to sand it down so that the paint really had something to hold onto.

After I sanded it was time to paint. I chose a dark gray called Rocky Mountain, which I love! I did two coats of paint, with about a 30 minute dry time between coats.

After the paint was dry I took mod podge and painted a thick layer onto the area where I wanted to put the sheet music. I then laid the music on and coated over the paper with mod podge.

After it was completely dry, I did a layer of polyurethane over the entire piece for durability. And after I took the pictures, I decided to distress the finish a little, which turned out awesome. But since I don't have a picture of that you'll have to go into the store and check it out!