Stenciled Number Trays

I found two oak TV trays in the trash along with some really nice baskets.  I found these treasures over a year ago before I started blogging. I was on my way to work early one morning when I spotted them.  I stopped my car thinking if I should get out to take a look.   When I saw the garbage truck heading my way I knew I had to think fast. I jumped out and grabbed whatever I could, throwing it all in my trunk. Then I sped away like I was some kind of thief.

Ok,  I am testing my memory here with this transformation since I have to go back a year or so on how I did this.  Sorry, there are no before pictures.  The trays were brown and the finish was worn.  I knew I wanted to lighten them up.  I thought if I used spray paint I could get a nice even coat with no brush marks.  I also knew I wanted to do something else to them. (something simple).  I noticed in a lot of magazines that numbers were popular in design.  I thought of stencils....but didn't want to spend the money, so I typed on my computer free number stencils and a whole bunch of different websites came up. I picked a site randomly chose numbers, printed and cut them out.

 I think if I did this again I would choose numbers that had some kind of meaning like the birthday of my daughter or the day we purchased our house or our anniversary.  You get the idea right.  You also can pick a different design for the stencil.



Let's see...  the next thing I did was fold tape on the back of the number and placed it in the middle of the tray.  This is an important step because it keeps the number from moving while you're spraying it with the paint.

So now that the numbers are taped spray the entire surface with any paint color. Then just before it completely dries gently peel off each number.  Then lightly spray just the number part. You can skip this part if you want the number to be a darker color. I used high gloss spray paint.

We use these trays just about every day and they wipe clean of water spills and food spills.

I like how you can see the grain of the wood showing through.

And That's That.....  So Simple!

You might remember seeing them in some of my earlier posts

These are great little trays that you could use in any room of your house. 

They can be used as dining trays, end tables, nightstands, table for your laptop.
They can also be used as extra tables for when you have guests over.

So how does that saying go?......  One man's trash is another woman's treasure.