When One Must Paint the Top

As we all know at this point, I really prefer to keep my furniture tops wood. I love the contrast of wood grain to paint, and it's fun to mix it up staining and sealing to all paint brush work. The thing is, you can ALWAYS paint. Paint forgives all sins. The wood tops are the hard part, they're the challenge level. Sadly, sometimes a piece won't allow for a wood element. This coffee table, for example, had a flaw that just couldn't be sanded out of the top. After trying and failing to sand it, I cursed a bit, stomped around a bit, and then re-grouped.
      The form of this little oval table is really wonderful, and it's structurally flawless, by no means a lost cause, so I went ahead and painted it entirely. I can't abide by simplicity, and especially on this table, just one color would have been hollow. It was begging for a bit more. I went to my favorite paint inspo fail-safe: 19th century botanical prints, in this case ferns.
        I opted for rendering the entire plant just in white, to keep the lines fairly clean against the custom mixed mint green base shade. I sketched the entire thing in pencil over the base color and then used a teensy detail brush and white latex furniture paint (from another project) to create the leaves. It took about two hours total to draw and paint, then I sanded the entire coffee table with 220 grit, and sealed it with wax. A surface like this is just as durable as a poly'd wood surface as I sanded it down to the bare wood before painting. That allows the paint to really bond with the wood, and the wax then bonds with the sanded flat paint to give it a gentle luster and make it wholly waterproof.