Finishing My Raw Wood Butler Tray
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It can be so easy to personalize wood furniture to make it your own. I have been loving the gorgeous quality of AVE Home‘s beautiful furniture and the opportunity to let my imagination come out with their raw wood pieces. When I finished my raw wood desk and my raw wood chair, I went for the striking contrast between charcoal grey, blush pink, and metallic accents. For my raw wood butler tray, I wanted to go with a bit more understated paint concept. Recently we shared our tutorial for making cotton clothesline baskets, which we painted with a metallic gold faux finish that we conveniently found on sale at our paint store. This ended up being perfect for complementing our raw wood butler tray!
Because the furniture was such nice quality, we did not have to do much sanding to prep the wood. You can lightly sand the tray before painting if you want, but it is not necessary. We then taped off the gold metal parts of the tray with blue painters tape to protect it from our finish. Then we got to painting. The faux finish is more like a glaze than a paint, so it allowed the beautiful grain of the wood to really show through. We painted approximately three coats of the finish, with time for drying between each coat. Now it was time to get crafty. We love using vinyl as a crafting material because it is so easy to work with. Geometric designs have been especially trendy in the last few years, so we created a simple geometric pattern to add to our raw wood butler tray.
Below you will find the download for our geometric designs if you want to use them to finish your own DIY home decor project! Use the SVG file if you will be using a cutting machine, or download the PDF to print on an inkjet printer with printable vinyl. All you need to do is cut out the designs and stick them directly onto the tray! I love how the geometric design turned out, especially with a vase of some of my favorite gold-accented paper orchids on display. If you love AVE’s furniture collection as much as I do, order AVE’s raw furniture wholesale until August 31, 2016, or find a dealer near you. Cheers to all the DIY home decor projects that help us express our beautiful and unique individuality! ~ Lia 
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Discussion
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6 Comments
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Peg
August 12, 2016 at 10:07pm
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Lia
August 15, 2016 at 10:24am
@Peg
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Laura
August 12, 2016 at 10:12am
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Lia
August 15, 2016 at 10:31am
@Laura
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Jane E. Jones
August 11, 2016 at 7:33pm
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Lia
August 12, 2016 at 8:21am
@Jane E. Jones
Back to the Toplove the butler table! but also admiring the brick wall and industrial sliding door. 😀
Thanks, Peg 🙂 The scene was set up just outside our office door in the hallway! We love that brick wall.
Beautiful!! I’m just starting in woodworking and one of my first projects will be a serving tray. I got the wood from the builder of our garden shed; it’s tongue and groove and already a lovely color, even tho it’s raw. My husband (bless his heart) got me a table saw since I’m not very strong in the hand department and have a hard time holding tools. Already I made a box with particle board to contain our puppy’s dry food, but I didn’t follow a pattern and thus you can tell it was made by an extreme novice!! It will be covered in fabric so I can hide some of it’s flaws… You have inspired several of my projects and I’ll share my tray with you (picture only, of course) when it’s done. Thank you!!!
Your plan for the raw tray sounds beautiful! We’d love to see your projects, send photos to hello@liagriffith.com! 🙂
Your tray table is so striking and sophisticated, love it so much. Finish you used brings out how amazing it is, goes beautifully in your new home. Metal legs are perfect with finish used, wow.
I have table similar but with bamboo like wood legs, would love to give it some pizazz. Will ponder for while to see what I can come up with. Guess could paint legs with metallic paint. Figure how how to give top pf tray metal accent. Have to be careful, when I redo pieces daughter comes over, wants to take things home.
Since we have very different styles guess that’s compliment. Have wonderful weekend
Thanks! It was fun to transform.