Ikea LATT Kids Table Makeover

When I was pregnant with Leopold, I received the Ikea LATT kids table from a friend who had used it for a party. I loved the simple look of the table and over the last five years this table has been used in just about every room of the house. It’s needed it’s bolts tightened a few times and it has seen it’s share of spills, bumps and scratches but it’s still a great table!

Lately our LATT table has been a little worse for wear. I’ve started getting more into home projects (hey, it’s 2020…who hasn’t right?) and this one was my second project in a two week span. You can read about my first one by clicking HERE! I gave my old, dated fireplace a gorgeous face lift!

After I got over my irrational hesitation to use wood stain and a hand sander, I was excited to fix up this table. Over and over food, paint, and goodness knows what else would get all gunked up in the creases of this table, and stuck to the sides. Once in a while I’d have to take a paint scraper to the table just to get the food off…it was gross.

SO during nap time one day I just went for it. I grabbed the table and chairs and got to work.

I started by cleaning and sanding down the ENTIRE table. Even the tabletop. Some spots were warped from spills so it was good to have a flat blank slate to work with.

After wiping off the dust, I stained it with the remainder of the “espresso” colored stain I used on the fireplace. I admit I probably should have done another coat or two, but it’s a kids table so I wasn’t really striving for perfection. Plus, my kids had to eat on a tiny breakfast tray for a week and sit on the floor so I was eager to get this done.

Too impatient to wait for the stain to completely dry, I decided to forego using painters tape along the edges and just dump the paint as is.

Picking a color was HARD. I decided to stick to one family of colors so when I mixed the paint I didn’t get BROWN. I had a lot of different purples already on hand so I went with that. Also, I love purple and my kids like pink and blue, respectively- so it was the perfect mix.

I honestly had no clue what I was doing the entire time, but for winging it I’m pretty pleased with the outcome! I was trying to go for a “geode” look, but as you can see it just ended up “swirly”.

Along with the purple acrylic paints I used white, pink, and a white glow in the dark paint. I watered them down just a little…at first I added WAY too much water and had to squeeze out the majority of it, probably wasting a good bit of my paint. Luckily acrylic paint is pretty cheap and I’d say in total I probably used about $5-7 worth. I also threw on some glitter I had on hand because why not add a little sparkle?!

Then I just poured it on the table top and chairs, and slowly turned each one until the paint covered the entire surface. I crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t crack and mix together entirely and let it dry for about two days while I waited on my resin to come in the mail.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJQTYecw/ (See the time lapse video here on my TikTok!)

I get my epoxy resin from Amazon, and was in luck because the 32oz kit I usually order was on sale from 29.99 to 23.99! Once that came I mixed the entire thing and poured it out over the dried acrylic paint (that luckily still looked nice).

While that set up, I coated the stained wood in polyurethane to seal in the color and add a little shine. You’re supposed to (but you don’t have to) sand it down and do a couple coats to get rid of imperfections and dust, etc, but again this is a kids table and I wasn’t looking for perfection.

I then let the resin set for about two days before bringing it in. I LOVE it!