You know what they say: one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And that definitely holds true for this DIYer’s amazing find.
Ann Lacouture of Florence, Oregon, had wanted a round coffee table, but couldn’t afford the styles she liked best. That is, until she found a dirty old washer basin at a local thrift store and realized she could make one herself.
“Weekly, I stop by my local thrift store and take about three minutes to walk through the store to see if anything catches my eye,” she told TODAY Home.
“One day, there were a dozen or so of these cool metal basins out in front of the store,” she said. “I didn’t even know what they were, but felt like they could be turned into something cool. Eventually, I asked an associate about them and was told they were old washer basins that people usually buy to use as burn bins.”
After a few weeks of seeing the basins disappear one by one, it occurred to her that one could easily serve as the base for a round coffee table.
“So, for $10, I snatched up one of the last ones,” she said. “Then, I stopped by the other thrift store in town where I found a small round dining table, from which I knew I could remove the top. That table cost me $18.”
To make the kind of table she had been admiring, Lacouture sanded down the washer basin to take off the dirt and grime, and then primed and painted it with a paint sprayer.
“I also sanded down, primed and painted the table top and then unscrewed it from its base,” she said. “My husband was able to easily attach it with screws to my washer-basin-turned-base.”
Lacouture said the whole project was actually pretty simple. “The most time-consuming part was sanding the table top down enough to ensure that the new paint would adhere well.”
Everyone who has seen the table has been so impressed with it, she said. Well, almost everyone.
“Many are surprised at the potential I recognized from the beginning in that old rusty basin. The only person who still thinks I’m nuts is my husband. He wonders why anyone would be interested in a table made out of garbage,” she said with a laugh. “I’m interested in anything that saves me money!”
Check out more of Lacouture’s DIY projects on Instagram.
