I have been wanting a farmhouse tray to go on my coffee table for a while, but have not gotten around to getting one. My MIL found this Christmas tray either on clearance last year or at a thrift store, not really sure where she got it.

She asked if I wanted it and while it is cute for Christmas, I was looking for a tray that would work all year long. I thought this would be super easy to makeover. It had some great elements for a farmhouse tray makeover with the wood bottom and black handles, and we could paint the edges white. So of course I said “Yes!” already thinking ahead to my vision of what the end product would look like. 🙂

I asked Mr. Wonderful for some help with it and he immediately got to work. I let him know what my vision for it was and he literally had it transformed in one afternoon. 🙂

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For this project you will need:

Since I obviously didn’t want it to say NOEL anymore, he thought the easiest way would be to just flip the bottom wood board over. Genius! The first step was to remove the black handles. This was easy to do since they were just screwed on.

The bottom board was nailed and lightly glued on so to get it off, Mr. W propped the tray up on a piece of scrap wood. He put another piece of scrap wood on top of the bottom board to act as a buffer so he would not damage the tray when pounding on it with a hammer.

He gently pounded on the bottom of the tray working his way around it until the bottom starting to come out.

There were little bits of the wood board that stuck to the edges where it was glued. We were not worried about that though since we were flipping the wood board over. Those would be on the underside of the tray now.

Using a chisel, Mr. W scraped the extra wood off of the rabbet (the notch in the wood) of the tray frame.

Using some very fine 220 grit sandpaper, he lightly sanded the red edges of the tray frame to get it ready to be painted.

I was initially thinking of distressing the frame after painting it white but later changed my mind. So he painted it first with a black primer then followed up with two coats of white after letting it dry the appropriate amount of time. We used an off white spray paint that is a perfect color for farmhouse projects. I have used it to replicate ironstone in the past as well, I love this color!

I told Mr. Wonderful he could just leave the NOEL on the bottom because no one would ever see it anyway. However, he is a bit of a perfectionist so he sanded the whole bottom and applied some aging stain so it would match the other side. The aging stain he used is the same as we used on our DIY tobacco basket.

Now all that was left was to put the tray back together. He lightly glued the bottom board back on and nailed it with some 3/4″ finishing brads. Lastly he reattached the handles. Simple! What do you think of our farmhouse tray makeover? You can see it in action in this simple fall vignette.

I love it! It is exactly what I was looking for. I always love to see things repurposed and this is a great example of that. Next time you are at the thrift store or in the clearance section, try to look past the item right in front of you to what it could be. Sometimes it is easy and other times it takes a bit of imagination. 😉