Extra Post: Comic Book Coffee Table

Here's an arts-n-crafts-type-thing I did recently. (also, bonus drama!)

So, my the top of my coffee table was accidentally ruined earlier this month. Some high-proof ethyl alcohol got sprayed across it. Apparently, blowing giant fireballs indoors can have some bad, not-flame-related consequences. Who knew, right? This pretty much destroyed the varnish and stain. It looked pretty bad (mustard-stain-on-a-white-shirt bad), so I gave it a whole new look.

Behold:

Here's a quick (Edit: nevermind. not so quick) rundown of what I did:

1. First, I took the legs off. I didn't do anything to them; They are pretty much what the rest of the table used to look like.

2. Sanding. I did two sides of it by hand in about two and a half hours, then I remembered that my roommate had borrowed a power sander. I found it in the basement and I finished sanding the rest in about 45 minutes.

3. After I got down to bare wood and cleaned up a few scratches, I scrubbed it down with water and a dish sponge to get all the dust off. After it dried, I wiped it down again with a dry cloth.

4. I hit up the local comic book store. They have loads of great stuff in their discount racks; most of them were $0.25 or $0.50 a piece. I picked up a few from regular racks too, but all-in-all I didn't spend more than twenty bucks.

5. I cut up the comic books. Some bits were chosen because they're from some favorite comics of mine. Others were chosen because of the iconic characters they contained (e.g., I hardly read any Justice League or Superman comics, but I wouldn't leave such a huge chunk of comics out). Some were chosen at random for filler.

6. I used a clear, polyurethane wood varnish (the kind used for floors) to glue down the pieces. Some of it was roughly planned, but I made most of the design up as I went along. I had no idea if this would work. I figured the table was ruined anyway, so if I mess up, no biggie.

7. After all the pieces were in place, I put down a heavy coat of varnish on everything. At this point, I still wasn't confident that this would work.

8. I let it dry and applied another coat. I did this for a couple days until:

Oh, no. Timeout.

As it was drying in the garage, the table got rained on. I dried it off completely, but to my horror, everything turned an opaque, milky-white color. Not happy, I spoke my favorite Oedipean vulgarism and kicked the thing end-over. Oops. I put it in the basement to stay until I figured out what to do next. By some wizardry (evaporation, I believe they call it), the color had turned less opaque overnight. I put a dehumidifier in the room and turned it on to (hopefully) speed up the process. After another 24 hours, it was clear again and you could see the comics under the varnish again. I decided that this might work out after all.

Whew.

8. (continued.) I layered on varnish until I could hardly feel the edges of the paper underneath.

9. Used a putty knife to get the few bits of paper that had folded over, onto the side.

10. I painted the sides white. Since comicbook pages are usually bordered in white and black, I thought this would look good with the almost-black legs (it does).

11. Table, Assemble! (haha, get it?)

A closer view: