Tray Makeover: From Ugly, To Uglier, To Beautiful

You know when you have an image of something in your head and you know it’s just going to be beautiful? Oh the anticipation, the excitement, the delight when you find it! It’s perfect! Is that reality? Not all the time. Nope, definitely not. This, my friends, is a story of a project gone terribly, terribly wrong  (have I emphasized that enough?). Thankfully, there is a happy ending with a great recovery.

It all started with a simple black tray from Goodwill.

It wasn’t bad as is, but it did have some paint discoloration on it. I knew it could be better. My plan was to have it as the second shelf holder on the black table in the sun room.

Perfect right? Except it needed to be prettier. My plan was to draw in the colors of the sun room with the tray. I went all over the color palette of the room trying to decide which color to paint the tray. I ultimately decided I wanted to go yellow.

I was pretty happy with the yellow as-is. But I thought it would be fun to bring in even more colors and some geometric shapes. This is where it goes downhill fast.

I used painters tape to randomly tape out a fun little pattern.

Then I took the remaining sun room colors to fill in the geometric shapes. That way when I pulled away the tape it would be pretty colors with yellow lines surrounding them.

So I got down to crafting. Thankfully good sense surfaced in enough time to yell at me, “STOP!”

Yup, halfway through I knew there was no salvaging this idea. It literally looked like the worst 80’s craft project gone so wrong. I mean, it was TERRIBLE. I’m not ashamed to say that first and loudest. What was I thinking? It was all wrong – so wrong!

Down went the paint brushes. I tried to rub the paint up with a wet cloth.  Nope, too dry. So I let it dry completely.

Then the failed project failed some more. When I went to pull the paint off the next day it became an even bigger mess. The tape didn’t come up well. It left spots. It pulled up the original black finish. It wouldn’t have worked in the first place. It was bad, people, bad.

I set to sanding it down in hopes of getting rid of all the paint edges and lines. It sanded down pretty well.

I then decided to take it to a manageable base where I could reimagine the project. On went the white spray paint.

You could still see the geometric lines now but I actually kind of liked that white on white pattern. But it was too much white. So I decided to keep it white and put paper on the bottom.

I planned to Modge Podge it down (hence the pictures with Modge Podge) but miraculously it had some static cling to it that kept it in place.

Now this is more like it.

I thought this tray was destined for the trash (as it wasn’t even worthy enough to go back to Goodwill) but I am so pleased with how it turned out in the end. Yes, I say that’s a point for the comeback kid. So everyone, the lesson here is to never give up, even if your first idea tanks, there is still room for beauty to emerge!

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