Another Picnic Table Redo

Hey, remember back in August of 2012 I got the idea from Pinterest to refurb a children's picnic table?  Well it has been a staple piece of furniture in our home. We seriously use that thing everyday, all day!

As you can see it gets a lot of love. So we decided to make one for my nephew for Christmas! I have had so many ideas about how I would do another one, so I finally got to put those ideas to use! I decided I wanted to make him one that was a children's version of a real picnic table. I used white and red checkered fabric for the table top to resemble a table cloth. I then used a brown "wood grain" fabric for the seats to resemble the wood of a picnic table. The rest we did black as thats the paint we had on hand. I think it turned out great!

Now that I did the project a second time I decided to take note of the fabric measurements I used to help with the original tutorial. So for the table top purchased 1 meter of fabric and had a little left over. I also used 1 meter of fabric for the seats of the table, again with some left over. If you were using the same fabric for both I think you could get away with closer to 1.5 meters of total fabric but that also depends on the size of your table.  For the plastic vinyl covering I used 1.2 meters which also came in a taller measurement meaning I didn't need as much length. Depending how it comes at your fabric store you may need anywhere from 1.2 to 1.5 or even 2 meters to cover your table and bench seats. Idea: measure your table before you head to the fabric sore ;)

For the painting part, if you want a good quality paint job try vinyl automotive paint, sold at NAPA auto parts. It sticks much better to the plastic and doesn't chip off like a spray paint would. We have been generously using our table for over a year now and have not had any paint chip off. You might want to also consider using felt bottoms for the underside of the table depending on the type of surface your table will sit on. We push our table around a lot on our laminate flooring and haven't had any issues but always better to be safe than sorry! 

For this project I found our table on Kijiji for $15 (although Im sure you could find a used table cheaper as my first time doing this I found the table for $10). My fabric cost me $26 and then of course the vinyl paint and staples for the staple gun. All in all its a super cheap project and ends up being very useful with toddlers! 

I hope my nephew loves his table as much as my son loves his!