New Coffee Table!

So I posted in the past about turning my old snowboard into a coffee table. I basically threw it together in an afternoon with scrap wood I had. It wasn't super sturdy, didn't provide a lot of surface area, and had no storage, but it was a heckuva lot better than nothing! We really just wanted a simple (and cheap) placeholder until we figured out a way to get this table.

We thought it would go great with our outdoorsy theme and it was something a little bit different, but the original was overpriced and, while I've been getting into building furniture, I have neither the skills nor the tools to accomplish something like this. So more recently, we decided to keep an eye out for another alternative, and the other day at Goodwill we found it! It was actually a pair of end tables, but when pushed together (and with a little work) we saw a coffee table in the making! Here they are in position right after we brought them home.

We wanted to dress them up a little and build them a little more into our theme (even if they were already woodgrain). That and you can see there was some damage on the top that we wanted to cover up. First off, I took care of functional stuff (i.e. removing the doors and putting felt padding on the bottom to protect the floor).
Then we wanted to paint it, but thought it would be cool to paint just the top (kinda like two little trees). I thought I had taken a picture, but apparently I missed a step so you will just have to visualize that we painted the top the same color as our entertainment center :-)
While that green worked great for something covered in vines and leaves, it wasn't quite the right shade to be on its own (and a plain solid color didn't work that great either). To remedy this, we got a darker shade of green and MC sponge-painted it to give it a little more "bushy" texture. (pardon the mess in the pic)
To bring it even more in tune with nature, we got a couple decals to liven it up! You can probably see the frog and ladybug ok, but you may need to click and look at the bigger version to see the line of ants meandering across.
All-in-all we were definitely happy with how it turned out. It is nice to have the versatility of a table that can be split into two mini tables, it fits in great with the decor, and both have a decent amount of storage in the for remotes, wii-motes and such. :-) In the works is a spice rack I've been building as well, but that one still needs some work so it will have to wait until a later post. Until then I'm going to kick back, watch some TV, and prop my feet on our snazzy coffee table!