This has been my plant stand for starting vegetable seeds, for about 20 years. Most of it is metal, but the tabletop was particle board with some sort of plastic or contact paper to look like faux wood, sort of.
The metal parts are in fairly good shape. They can be cleaned of with steel wool and given a couple of coats of Rust-oleum. I'm leaning towards a bronze look, which matches other furniture in the sun room.
I found a plank a little more than twice as long as the table top, and a bit more than half as wide. I cut two pieces, and edge glued them, along with three braces on the underside which I glued into place and "clamped" with drywall screws. I also found some 1 x 2 trim in the shed and cut to make a trim all around. After installing that, using wood glue and 1 1/2 inch nails, I have the general look that I want.
Since this will be a plant stand, I'd like for it to be a bit more water tolerant. I might finish the top using vinyl plank flooring left over from a bedroom remodel. I could paint the trim either the same bronze, or black. I'm not sure yet. The wood is nothing special at all, but I could do a dark stain and apply a few coats of polyurethane.
Plant stand before starting. You can't tell, but that fake wood grain plastic coating just peeled off like badly sunburned skin.
It disassembled fairly easily. This is one of those assemble-with-an-allen-wrench types of furniture. That metal frame is nice and sturdy.
I sat the cut pieces of wood on the bottom section to look at them for a while.
After gluing and fastening the two planks together, same for braces on underside, and installing edging.
There is still a front piece to install, but this is most of the construction. I don't want to install the drawers again. They are just ugly and useless. The front piece will somewhat hide the lights that I want to install under the table top. The new top is almost interesting enough to apply some sort of whitewash type finish, if there is something water-proof that I could use for a seal. I still think I'm most likely to pain the trim black, or dark grey, and install vinyl flooring as the top surface. It's just more practical for a plant starting station.
I like this enough so far, I might make a similar wide shelf for the lower part to start vegetable plants under LED plant lights. The current shelf is narrow metal. I'm sure there are more wood planks in the shed. I guess I should finish this part before embellishing it with something more.
Now to wait for Amazon to deliver the wood fillers and Rust-oleum. I'm not into going to Home Depot for a viral version of Russian Roulette just yet.
