Milk Can Side Table

So have I mentioned before how much I love the Lakewood Antique Market??  Like, I really love it!  I look forward to it every month that I am home visiting Georgia.  This time, we went to Lakewood with the idea of wanting to DIY a side table for my house.  I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I would know it when I saw it.  My dad and I walked around as usual and nothing really spoke to me…you know what I mean, some pieces just speak to you!

Or is it just me that thinks I can hear furniture talk…

We were getting ready to leave when I decided to take one last lap in the outdoor area of the market.  As we were walking around I spotted this old rusty milk can in a corner all by itself.  It was very rusty and probably something that some would see as trash, but I thought it could make a fun table.  I have seen people make tables out of milk cans before, but they are usually a lot nicer than this one!  The guy selling it was basically asking nothing for it so I decided to get it and see what it could turn into!

I know it doesn’t look like much, I said it was VERY rusty!  We got it home and started taking a closer look at it an noticed underneath all that rust there was some writing there.  I got really excited and wanted to know what was hiding under all that rust!  We took a hand sander to it and it cleaned up pretty nice!  The writing was a little hard to read still, so we put a light coat of white spray paint over the letters to make them pop.  Then put a clear coat over the whole thing and voila!

The milk can was originally from Rochester, MN and it is so neat to think about how it ended up in Georgia, at least it is interesting to me…:)

Pretty cool before and after if I do say so myself… 🙂 🙂

I purchased a 24 inch round piece of wood from Lowes for the tabletop.  They sell these in the lumber section in different sizes to fit what suits your table best.  I spray painted it brown, let it dry, then white and let that coat dry.  After it was dry, I took a sander to the top to give it a distressed look to match the milk can.

To attach the tabletop, I used 1-1/4 inch fender washers and #10 x 0.75 inch sheet metal screws.  I used 4 of each of these and attached them as shown above.

The photo above is another milk can side table we made, but we attached the wood top the same way on both of them.

I absolutely love how it turned out and it is always a topic of conversation whenever someone comes to my house for the first time!  What do you think?

I love finding these milk cans at flea markets and love finding new ways to use them.  Do you have any ideas for milk cans?  I would love to hear about them!

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