DIY Table Tray

Happy Friday Eve babes! How is it the weekend already?! Although I am definitely not complaining! So I know I have said a while back that I want to start doing more home decor and DIY posts, well today is finally the day! Griffin and I love doing DIYs, or more I think of ideas and Griffin does the actual DIYing. lets be honest. Although I like helping! So today we made the cutest rustic table tray for our breakfast nook and I just love how it came out! It was all used from things we already had in the garage as well (minus the handles). We used a super fun and easy technique for the distressing that you don’t even have to use sandpaper and will power to do! Less work = my kind of work! Ok let’s get to it!

Supplies Used in This Project:

1/4 in plywood

8ft piece of 1-in x 2-in poplar

Wood Glue

Clamps

Minwax English Chestnut Stain

Elmer’s School Glue

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old White

(2) Screen Door Pull Handles

Annie Sloan Soft Wax

We decided we wanted this to be 28 inches long by 13.5 inches wide. Start by making the cuts below:

1/4 inch sanded plywood: 28-in long by 13.5-in wide

1-in x 2-in Poplar: (2) 28-in long, (2) 12-in long

Once the cuts are made, check to see that they fit together in a perfect rectangle. Then glue the 1×2’s together like above.

Once the glue is dried, the next step is to glue the piece of plywood to the bottom.

That was pretty easy, right? We now have a tray. Now let’s add some color!

Here are the products we will need to get the cracked paint look. Our go to stain color is English Chestnut by Minwax, which will be the base coat. Any dark color paint or stain will work in this process. The color used here will show through the cracks of the paint we use after this step. The paint color we chose was Old White by Annie Sloan.

Give it a nice dark coat. If the first coat is a little light, go ahead and apply another.

Once the stain is dry we can start the crackled paint technique to give it a nice rustic look. What we will do here is brush on a coat of Elmer’s glue. The thicker you apply the glue, the more of a cracking effect you will get. I tend to apply a thin layer all over and then go back and thicken up some areas.

While the glue is still wet, go ahead and start the painting process. Give it a nice thick coat of paint. Be sure to brush it on smooth as we are only doing one coat of paint. Try not to go back over areas you’ve already painted because it will create more brush strokes.

Right when you are finished painting, use a hair dryer on high heat to dry the paint and glue. You will immediately see some areas start to crack.

Here’s the look you will get after it dries. If you have a few spots with strong brush strokes, add another layer of glue and then paint over it lightly on just that spot and then dry it again.

I found these screen door pull handles at Lowes that had a nice rustic finish to them for the side handles.

I made a center line and measured 3/4-in down to mark where I wanted to attach the handle. I pre drilled the holes to be sure the screws went in nicely.

Screw those in and repeat the same steps on the other side.

The last step was to add a coat of Soft Wax. This gives it a nice smooth finish and seals the wood.

And that’s it! It wasn’t so bad, was it and I am in love with the finished look!

I hope you all liked my first home DIY and hopefully I will have a few more coming your way! I hope you all have a fabulous rest of your week and weekend! <3