Up-Cycled Plastic Picnic Table

In our fairly small apartment, we've had to sacrifice certain spaces to make room for others.  Mainly, we've decided to lose our kitchen table, and use what is designed to be a dining room as the kids' play room.  It makes more sense to have all their toys in once area downstairs, rather than having them drag things around from their rooms upstairs to play with downstairs, and it definitely makes it easier when it's clean-up time.

So, we had to figure out how to serve meals without a dining room...

It's easy for my husband and I to use t.v. trays for our food, but the kids are a little more... clumsy. ;-)  They need something smaller, and more stable!  We've have a small folding table with little folding chairs set up in the living room for a while, but it's gotten so worn, and it's quite literally on its last leg.  It may now rest in peace!  We have a "new" table!

Beautiful, isn't it?!

Okay, so when we got it from someone who had used this table outside for several years, it was obvious that it had seen better days!  First Step: Deep cleaning!

Eight little screws are all that's holding the table together.  Super easy to take apart.

My husband was a great help, and did most of the cleaning!  We used my homemade vinegar floor cleaner to really scrub it down, and sanitize it.  The table was pretty dirty, but it still only took about 30 minutes.

After it was all clean and dry, the next step wass painting the legs.  I used Krylon plastic spray paint that was on sale at Wal Mart.  I found a brown color that has a little bit of glittery shimmer to it.  Not too much, but just enough to add a little something extra. =-)  (This Stuff!) I set the legs on a plastic chair that I didn't care about ruining, and sprayed!  It covered nicely, and quickly!  I bought two cans, but didn't need all of it.

Here you can see the slight shimmer to it!

BONUS: I had a lot of over-spray that got on the ugly green chair that the legs were sitting on.  Since I had some left over paint anyways, I finished off the can on the rest of the chair!  Probably would have turned out better had I planned for it, and cleaned off the chair first... For now, it's complete with little brown spider webs, and a few random leaves at the bottom. Eventually I'll get more paint, and do the other chairs that we have like this to match. ;-)

Next- Upholstering the seats and table top!  After many hours of browsing online, and probably 3-4 trips to the fabric store, my husband and I finally agreed on a pattern!  I got two yards, to make sure I had enough, and probably ended up with about 1/2 yard leftover.  Then we used our staple gun to attach it to the bottom of the table top and seats.  One of the random difficulties, was getting the fabric around the little pegs that the screws will go into.  I ended up just cutting a slit all the way to them, and then folding the fabric around them a little bit.  Once I started stapling them down, it stayed nicely, and didn't add too much bulk.

It took a little while to get the corners laid nicely, but once I figured out what worked, it went quicker.  The key was to get most of the bulk to what will be the underside of the tabletop, and not the sides by the screw pegs.  We wanted to make sure the table would still piece together easily.  (I used some duct tape to help me keep things lined up until I got them stapled-- it was really helpful!)

Since the seats only had one screw peg, they were a little easier to place.

Once we got all the fabric on, we repeated the process with a layer of clear vinyl!  This way, it will be easy to keep clean, and will wipe down easily after meals!

All done!

Then it was time to put the table back together!  Viola!

What a transformation!