New Epoxy Top for a Struggling Ikea Table

I started with an Ikea table from work that someone sat on and accidentally broke one of the legs. The table was likely going to get thrown out, but I rescued it, fixed the leg, and totally transformed the boring beige coffee table. I believe it was this table in tan from Ikea:

 

Above, you can see the underside of the table with the legs removed. The top right corner is where the leg folded and broke the particle board. I put the piece back in place with some wood glue and left it clamped overnight.

Next I added some wooden trim around the entire base to make it more sturdy. The legs have screws that protrude out of the top, and the whole leg is rotated to screw it on to the table. In order to screw the legs back in, I needed to drill holes through the trim that lined up with the existing holes in the table.

When I epoxy a table top, I round the edges of the table top so that the epoxy can run over the sides. I couldn't sand the edges of the table, given that the table top was hollow particle board, so I added wooden trim around the outside of the table too.

I put the legs back on, and made new brackets to attach the bottom piece of the table to the legs, since a couple of the old brackets were broken as well. After attaching the legs and the bottom portion, I took it outside to paint the whole thing white.

I brought it inside to paint the top, and touch up any rough spots.

Once the paint was fully dry, I wrapped the legs with paper to keep the epoxy off them. Also note, I set the table legs on pieces of scrap wood to elevate it off the painting tarp, just in case any epoxy did manage to seep under the paper.

Then came the fun part! Mixing the epoxy, and making a mess! Above are the colors I used for this table. They come from Just Pigments and Black Diamond Pigments. The epoxy I used is Pro Marine Supply. Check out the links below!

   

Here is the table while the epoxy is still setting. I went over the entire table with ~40oz of the white epoxy, ensuring to get all of the edges, nooks, and crannies, then drizzled designs with ~8oz each of the blue, black, and grey. I was a little disappointed in the grey color, as it was too similar to the white. I was hoping for more of a gun metal grey. I used a hair dryer to get the ripple effect when blending the colors. I think I had about 30-40 minutes to play with the design and effects before the epoxy started to set.

Some of the last things were to go over the entire surface with a torch to get rid of any small bubbles that rose to the surface, and go around the underside with a popsicle stick to catch all of the drips. I did that 3-4 times about every 30-45 minutes while the epoxy set. Then I didn't touch it for a few days. It's always tempting to touch an epoxy top after 24 hours or so, but you'll find that it's still super easy to leave fingerprints or smudges in the finish. My advice would be to not touch it for at least 48-72 hours.

Here are the final results!