The Return

 I'M BACK.....

I think it is time to reawaken this moribund blog.  As I decide what content I plan on posting, I will post two well received posts about a hack I did of a piece of IKEA furniture:  A Baseball Card table from an IKEA Lack table.  

Enjoy.  

A Use for Old Baseball Cards Pt II

Having started the project to hack an exisitng piece of IKEA furniture: the LACK table, I planned to finish it sometime before my spring break vacation was finished which meant today.

To recap, I purchased the LACK table from IKEA last week and I placed 70s and 80's baseball cards to the table top.  Yesterday, I sealed the table by applying a mixture of 4 parts glue with 1 part water.  This morning I was ready to apply the epoxy resin to coat the entire table top.  The resin would be left to cure and by tomorrow I will have a cool piece of furniture/nostalgia.

The epoxy resin was purchased at Home Depot and following the directions I measured roughly 8 oz of the epoxy and after stirring I combined with the sealer again mixing for 3 minutes.  This seemed to be enough for my table and I used the paint stirrers from Home Depot to spread the mixture across the table.

Once I was satisfied with the application, I covered the table so no outside debris or my kids would disturb the table as it cured.

Here are some pictures:

So far, so good.  The cards have taken on a shine and once fully cured, the table will be very nice to look at and to use.  This has been a fun project and while researching it on the web, I saw a cool video for making a game table that I might try with the same IKEA table (I do have enough Epoxy for one more table).  First I want to see how this one turns out.  

That's all for now, thanks for stopping by. 

A Use for Old Baseball Cards - Pt 1

In just a few weeks, April 22, Earth Day will be upon us.  In the spirit of the environmental saving themes of reuse, reduce, and recycle, I've begun a project which incorporates some of these green tenets.

I saw on another blog called IKEA Hackers a cool table which was made using baseball cards on the table top .  Unfortunately, the post with the video was taken down, so I scoured the web to try to find a video which showed the technique to seal the table with epoxy resin.  This seemed like a fun project to try to take a crack at doing.

As a boy, my brother and I collected many, many, many baseball cards and a few years ago he gave me a ton of them.  I had them outside my house, sitting in a box inside my crowded shed.  They really weren't serving any purpose, so I went through them to select the cards I wanted on my table.  My choices included local favorites, from the NY Mets and Yankees and other players and cards circa 1970's and 80's.  Now I was ready to begin.

So far here's what I have done:

1) Purchased 1 - IKEA - Lack Table - 21 5/8" X 21 5/8"  - $7.99
2) Purchased 1 - Glue Gun and Package of Glue Sticks - $5.50
3) Sort through 70's - 80's era Topp's and Fleer Baseball Cards for use on table - Priceless!!!
4) Arrange chosen cards and use Glue Gun to adhere cards to table.

This is the current state of my project:

My next step is to seal the cards using a mixture of 3 parts glue and 1 part water.  After that dries and once I find the appropriate epoxy resin to use, I will coat the table with the epoxy and it will cure and then hopefully it will look something like this table:



Have you ever taken on a project like this?  So far it's been fun and in researching this project, I saw a cool video where a nice looking game table was created.  Maybe a future project???  Well, I have to get this one done first. 

Take care and hope to hear from you all so don't be shy brave readers.