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In order to seal the edges, just in case, I painted PVA glue onto the edges of the mdf. I’ve read varying directions for doing this, either to thin it with water (probably the best idea) or to apply it at regular thickness. The regular thickness was what I chose, it was a pain, but appears to have worked well enough.

I failed to take a photo before digging into the project lastnight, but the the paint leveled out amazingly well, either that or I was imagining it after inhaling all those solvents. The paint is also incredibly hard, I am impressed very much by the Rustoleum.

I did wet sand all surfaces with 320 grit, with a hard rubber block. It’s amazing though just how much paint I actually took off to get a nice level surface, it did sort of look interesting though.

You can see there are brush marks in the top, but with any luck they’ll even out just as nicely as they did yesterday. This is sort of where I’m in a quandry. There has been an insane amount of dust collected already on the surface of the table. I screwed up a little and had some of the paint run down from the top onto the sides. Amazingly enough those mistakes don’t really show up all that well in the photo.

As it stands, I think I’ll be wet sanding at a very fine grit, perhaps using 400 and then also 600. I’ve built up a nice protective (thick) coat of the Rustoleum enamel now and the next step would be to spray black lacquer (if I can find it, I’d use Rustoleum for that too). I think the fast drying nature of the lacquer would be the best way to avoid the dust particles collecting… it’d also (in theory) give me a very nice smooth surface, one that I could polish.

I loathe the idea of using something from a spray can. I’m pretty sure I’ll still need to at least give the edges another coat of paint, be it the same enamel or the lacquer.

I’ve given some thought to just putting a clearcoat onto it, but the solvent based ones will take too long to dry — same dust problem — and the water based one, though I never had a dust problem with it, is likely to exhibit the very same chipping problem. It’s also nowhere near as glossy as this.

I know fully well that I can’t really get a super great ‘piano’ finish on something without having a ‘clean room’ and real spraying equipment, but I’m going to give it my best shot anyway.

So now, again, we wait. This time tomorrow or so I’ll be able to judge if the paint leveled out enough to make it look right. If it hasn’t, then I will go the lacquer route. I’d need to apply fifty cans of the stuff to get as thick of a protective coat that I have now, so even with a double coat of lacquer, if the surface scratches, etc, there is all that black glossy enamel underneath. It seems like it would work out nicely at least.

I really am all about the prep work, I know that if the undercoats suck that the topcoats will too, so… we’ll see. I want this to look as good as I can possibly make it look; afterall, I have two other pieces of furniture (and possibly a third if I decide to repaint the bar furniture thing — a crappy old dresser) that I’ll have to eventually paint to match. In retrospect though I probably should have tried this out on the relatively tiny side table first. ;)

Another option, since I’ve expelled the idea of clearcoating, is to do without the super high gloss look, instead rub on my paste finishing wax… I know it looks great on stained wood, it might work on this too… hmmmmm, indeed.

When looking at the top of this coffee table, it really tempts me to design a dining table. I’ve been lusting after both one from Ikea and one from Crate & Barrel — both veneer and mostly identical — but, hmm… if I can manage to get a fairly decent and super high gloss black paint finish… just perhaps, I’d build it instead.