Paint and Transfers on Drop Leaf Tables

I’m loving these drop leaf tables and the bird transfers. They are the perfect little addition without making them the main focus.

My customer gave me three tables to makeover. With her home decor being antiques, shabby and traditional, an eclectic feel that I like as well, they fit right in.

One of the three tables was oval, being for a different room (you can see here) was painted different than the drop leaf tables.

The drop leaf tables are in a guest bedroom. The curtains have branches in them, so I suggested some small birds on a branch to match. And…voila! This happened.

Paint and Transfer

A cute thing about these tables…Betty Davis was written on the underside, on each side of the frame. Well, of course I had to draw eyes on one! Right? I mean who wouldn’t! (And I may have played Bette Davis Eyes on my reel with instagram 🙂 You can see that here.

When I delivered these tables and mentioned the name written on the bottom, my customer said that was her mother. For a second I felt blank faced, then said, “I had to draw the eyes!” My customer didn’t say much, but she didn’t seem annoyed either. She’s a sweetheart.

Drop Leaf Tables

These are the materials I used for these tables:

White Lightning cleaner
BOSS gray primer
Manatee Gray Chalk Mineral Paint
Transfers I had on hand
Clear Coat Satin
DB mini angle brush
DB small oval brush

I did sand the top of all scratches or small dents. The primer went on smoothly and allowed for a smooth chalky top that the client desired.

👩🏻‍🎨 This is an important sidenote. Be sure to allow your paint to dry in table folds. I try to do thin coats, if I’m doing a thin primer coat I do one thin paint coat. And then I do one clear coat for the finish. It’s important to let that dry for a few days or even more, I like to wait the cure time of 20 to 30 days. If you don’t, you risk the chance of the paint being tacky and pulling apart if you put the leaf up too soon.

One of the tables needed some repair on the piping since it was broken off in areas. Using some bondo and pieces of a wooden skewer stick, yup, that did the trick!

Amazing the secret tricks we have.

After all that, the cleaning, scuff sanding and cleaning again, the repairs and the priming…Paint and Transfers!

I pieced each part of the tranfers. The birds are whole of course, but the branches and leaves were pieced together and the birds sit perfectly on display. They were all just enough for each table leaf. Aren’t they sweet?

My customer was thrilled with the finished pieces!

What do you think, do you like the birds on these beautiful tables? Let me know in the comment section below.