Colourful makeover for an ’80s telephone table
As soon as I saw the heartshaped tiers of the old black telephone table, I knew I wanted — needed — to paint them like heart-shaped rainbows.
The table was a hand-medown from a friend who moved to the area and passed it along, knowing I’d do something fun with it. Her dad built her the table back in 1988 to hold the brand-new telephone connected to the jack that had been installed in her bedroom for a Christmas gift.
I knew a hearts-and-rainbows table would be perfect for our seven-year-old daughter, with whom I share a dizzy love for Taylor Swift’s ME music video. There’s a part where the scene spills into a kaleidoscope of bright pastel hearts — a nod to the lyrics of an earlier song. “Kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under (paint) coats.”
Sometimes I don’t know how a DIY project will turn out until I’m finished, but I could see this table perfectly in my mind.
I started slapping on a quick primer coat of pale pink wall paint, just to tone down the black and give me a somewhat blank slate for the design. Then it was time to plot out the placement of each heart ring.
I knew I wanted to use a toned-down version of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet (ROYGBIV without the indigo — a colour that’s often skipped when you’re simplifying the rainbow).
Six colours meant I needed each tabletop divided into six rings, with the innermost ring being a solid heart. Since the table only measured about 15cm from the edge to the middle, I could allot about 2cm to the five outer rings and then leave the inner section to be the violet heart.
I used a ruler and started measuring 2cm in from the edge of the tabletop, marking all the way around with a pencil. I connected the marks to form the outer ring, and then repeated the process as I worked my way toward the centre of the tabletop. (When I did the bottom tabletop, I just winged it without measuring and it looked almost exactly the same.)
Since I knew I wanted the colours to be soft, I squeezed dollops of white acrylic paint onto a plastic palette and then added tiny daubs of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. I wasn’t too picky about each shade, knowing it was just the first coat and I’d have to mix more later.
Using a small brush, I painted the red rings and then skipped over to the yellow — leaving the orange ring bare for now, while the others dried. It’s easier to keep your colours crisp when you let the in-between areas dry first. Then you can go back and carefully fill in the middle sections and you’ll have nice clean lines.
Once the first coat of every colour was dry, I mixed up more batches of each — fine-tuning the colours this time, since they’d be the final coat. I mixed more red into the white for the pinkish shade, since I wanted it to be a bit bolder, but I lightened the purple and the blue. After the second coat, the rings were finished. I quickly painted the legs white, and then the table was ready.
The heart-shaped rainbow table looks so cute in our daughter’s bedroom. Mostly it holds her Alexa (Echo Dot) for her bedroom dance parties, but it’s also housed her painted Clay Cafe creations and her LOL dolls. It’s also served as a very fancy stage for her Barbies to perform on.
I’m so glad my friend generously offered us this sweet little telephone table. The funny thing is that this friend fervently hates Taylor Swift — whose video was my inspiration — but hopefully she can overlook that part. After all, rainbows and hearts are awesome, no matter who inspires them.