table project: complete (well, mostly)

Months ago I bought Donovan a furniture set from Ikea that included a kid-sized table and 2 chairs, made of unfinished wood.  It was cheap, and I figured I could paint it myself and maybe even do something cute with it to make it special.  Turns out the painting process made this a much more pricey piece of furniture than I'd intended, though part of that was because I really wanted to use an eco-friendly no-VOC paint and the one brand I found (the FreshAire Choice) only sold gallon-sized cans of it.  But, Cyrus is kindly making D a small bookshelf (modeled after this one from Pottery Barn Kids) so we'll be able to use the same paint for it, too, and have them match.

Here's the before shot (only pic I could find, lol)

Here's how the project turned out:


The primer and base green color are the FreshAire Choice paint, the trees were painted using Behr samples.  The tops of the trees are D's hand prints- if I was gonna paint this myself, I wanted to do some sort of personalization with/of him.  What I did was, I put some paint on a paper plate, stuck his hand in it, then patted his hand on each spot a couple times.  I was worried about how this process would go, that he'd throw a fit or not cooperate or end up getting paint everywhere, but he was surprisingly docile and happy with me guiding his arm.  I later went back to paint the tree trunks.  I must say, I'm really impressed with how it all turned out.  I was worried that the reality would not at all match the picture in my head.  ; )

Originally I'd also thought about using some of the leftover dark green or brown paint to paint some accents on the chairs or table, like a trim, but I doubt I'll bother with it.  I think I still need to paint some sort of top coat on it (online tutorials were not consistent about this).  But, I'll let D play with them until I'm ready and able to do that last step.