Life's Little Moments: Picnic table redo

Today was rather chilly august day (it's starting to feel like Fall) so we decided to work on a DIY, Pinterest inspired, project. I found this beauty a few months back but just haven't had a chance to get around to the project what with our events and summer holidays. The project is a children's Picnic table redo. Basically taking an old plastic picnic table and making it fabulous. The inspiration came from the blog Caroline's Crafty Corner. You can check out her blog or see my instructions below for a step by step guide on how to redo your old children's picnic table.

This is Caroline's Picnic Table Redo,
and my source of inspiration

First thing I needed was a picnic table. Since Al is only a year old I don't have any old/used picnic tables hanging around. So I turned to Kijiji for a little help on this one. Upon my first search I found one 10 minutes from home and only $10.00. I paid for it with loonies (not relevant just a funny fact to show you how cheap this project was).

The picnic table BEFORE

From there we took the picnic table apart which was super easy as it was all plastic and snapped together. Maybe 10 minutes of effort.

Five pieces

After we had our five pieces we gave them a bath*. Being that it was used, it was a little worn and wearing spider webs.

* be careful not to fully submerge the plastic pieces as they fill with water and are nearly impossible to drain. Try wiping it down or hosing it off instead. Unless of course you want to drill a hole in the underside of each piece to empty the water, but really thats an extra step. Save yourself the time.

Next we went out to the fabric store and purchased 2 meters of a cotton fabric with a pattern of our choice as well as 1.5 meters of vinyl fabric. To my surprise your common Fabricland carries this vinyl stuff. With my membership the fabric came to $31.25 all together, however I'm sure you could do it cheaper by finding a cotton fabric that is on sale. Also as a side note, the reason I got less length of the vinyl than the cotton is that the width of the vinyl was greater than that of the cotton so in the end it all evened out. For our cotton patterned fabric we decided to go with comic book theme. I wanted something gender neutral and something that would fit in with our house (no mickey mouse or pooh bear but still kid friendly).

Now that we knew the theme of the table I was able to decide what color to spray paint the table legs. I decided to go with plain old black so as not to take away from the awesome comic book fabric. At this point I should probably explain why we didn't just spray paint the whole thing and be done with it. Well plastic does not take well to paint and once dried it will usually chip off with the scratch of a fingernail or wipe of a wet cloth. Kids are messy and wipe ups are often so we can't have a picnic table that falls apart upon first use. So that is why we opt for fabric with a vinyl covering. Makes for easy wipe ups for markers, paint and snacks. By putting a cotton fabric underneath the vinyl you get to choose fun and unique styles for your picnic table. Anyway we used just about a full can of black spray paint on the legs of our table.Probably a $5.00 value.

Next step, the last one, and probably most time consuming, stapling the fabric to the plastic pieces. First we stapled the comic book fabric to the table, and bench seats (because the seats get messy too we cant just spray paint those either) and then we followed that by stapling the vinyl to each of the three pieces. This probably took just over an hour and cost us a box of staples, again maybe a $5.00 value. It is handy if you have staples and spray paint kicking around your garage.

Stapling the fabric on. What an awesome hubby

Time for the vinyl

A finished tabletop

To recap the used table cost me $10.00, the fabric cost me $31.25 the spray paint was free (but at some point probably cost us $5.00) as well as the staples (add another $5.00). Grand total for the awesome picnic table = $51.25. Out of curiosity I looked up the cost of a new Little Tykes picnic table... $44.99.

Darn, this wasn't a money saver but on the bright side we have a very unique table that we are proud to say we made ourselves. As my husband says "we will not be making any more of these". I think he has an equal amount of disdain for Pinterest as I have love for it. I'm sure he shudders at the words "look what I found on Pinterest". Anyway here is our finished table, which by the way our son loves. He's still a little young for it but loves to climb all over it. He'll figure it out.

Tabletop and Benchtops

The finished product

Before and After

Since doing my picnic table project I have had a few friends create their very own! They shared their finished products with me so here is a little inspiration for you, if you are considering redoing a picnic table!