Project Fish Tank Table

FINALLY finished my latest project!! Its been bugging me because our fish tank has just been sitting on an ugly patio table, in our living room getting dirtier and dirtier until I could get this table redone!  We even had a plate inside it to make the water spilling from the filter quieter….people thought it was a frisbee.

This is the only picture I have of it, I should have taken a "before" pic but I was just so excited to get the living room DONE! So, notice that in this pic you can see how the water is semi clear…. yeah it wasn't like that by yesterday!  Our poor fish...

So here's the table before.  It used to be Gunnar's grandmothers and maybe great grandmothers, I'll have to ask again, and has been passed around the family.  Ann told me it used to be taller but somewhere along the way someone cut the legs off to make it shorter.  Gunnar had it when he was young for his fish tank, when he went to college, he gave it to my brother for his fish tank, then, when we moved back, Jonathan wasn't using it anymore so we got it back.  I love furniture with history!  It used to be white (and apparently blue at some point) but all the paint was peeling off and chipping, so it was time for a makeover! 

I thought I could maybe just sand it but it proved too big of a job so I asked my husband to pick me up  stripper to help me out.  This is the text I got from him later… funny husband...

Getting all bubbly from the stripper...

So here it is after A LOT of sanding, A LOT of stripping, and A LOT of sanding!  Those legs were rather a pain…so many grooves!  I also took it apart and reenforced the bottom of it, it was getting a little wobbly.  I want to stain it someday, the wood is really pretty, but because it will have water on it for a while I thought I'd paint it for now to protect it.

So it took me FOUR hours to get the fish tank cleaned, tables switched out, new water put in, and everything cleaned up!  Sheesh! The water's still really dirty in this picture but I was making progress!!

I had some left over paint from our bathroom in Leakey, who wants to buy new paint when you can just use some you already have?!  Plus this blue/grey works great in the living room and is more subtle so that the fish tank stands out and not the table itself.

All finished!  Now to buy some new fish to add to the shiny clean tank!! Ours need some new friends...

Before and after…

Another perk was that I finally got to hang up my cross from John and Jonathan!  :)