Drab to Fab: “Have a Ball” With Our Upcycled Table

Drab to Fab: “Have a Ball” With Our Upcycled Table

We were challenged to participate along with other local designers and bloggers in the Drab to Fab feature at the Cleveland Home + Remodeling Expo. With a modest budget of $50, we were to buy any item and transform it however we’d like. All of the upcycled pieces will be displayed at the show and auctioned off with the proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity of Summit County. It’s such a fun feature at the show, and we had a BALL working on our project!

We started with a really beat up old bamboo table that had certainly seen better days. It was missing a piece, falling apart, totally wonky, and full of cracks.

So we decided to take it totally over the top! Andy had the idea to box in the legs with acrylic sheets and fill it with ball pit balls. Yes, plastic ball pit balls!!

The first thing we did is take the whole table apart. Andy filled some of the major cracks with putty, removed the unnecessary support pieces altogether since one was missing anyway, and gave the whole thing a few coats of white spraypaint before putting it back together more sturdily.

We bought sheets of acrylic at Home Depot which Andy cut down to size. Figuring out how to attach the sheets to the table was the hardest part. Ideally we would screw the sheets directly to the legs, but these legs weren’t strong or thick enough to handle any drilling or extra screws. The next best option would be to glue them, but with the bamboo not being smooth, that wasn’t an option either. So Andy drilled small holes into the four corners of each sheet and used clear string for making jewelry, which I already had in my craft box, to actually tie the pieces of acrylic to the legs. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.

We wanted this piece to look like something Burritos and Bubbly would do, and let’s face it, primary colors are not our thing. We lean more towards pastels and gold glitter! (Ok, I do, so Andy does too by default!) For some reason we happened to have A LOT of ball pit balls already, and it turns out there are a few pink and purple ones in each set that are actually kind of pretty. I like that they’re all different shades. In order to play up the bamboo elements on the table, I painted the top with a tropical palm leaf pattern in shades of pink and purple to match the balls. And to finish the whole thing, I used gold glitter vinyl and my Cricut to write “have a ball” on the top!

Want to see how our budget broke down?

Spraypaint + acrylic sheets: $36 Gold glitter vinyl: $9 Ball pit balls: free! Clear string: free!

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So we went a little over budget, but we actually have some acrylic sheeting left over.

I love how this turned out. It’s fun and silly. It’s not at all practical. Pretty much, we HAD A BALL!

Visit the Cleveland Home + Remodeling Expo March 24-26 at the Huntington Convention Center to see our table and all the other designers’ and bloggers’ and to bid on them for the silent auction! Even better, enter to win free tickets by TODAY, March 22 at noon ! Just click on the image above to enter!!