Step 2: Sand the top of the table. Two very important notes on this point, if you’re going to be lazy and use an electric sander, go outside to do it. Secondly, pay some attention to the fact that you’re trying to protect the edging with tape, because its rather likely that your electric sander will destroy it.

Step 4: Acquire a good bit of tile. I went with a three color scheme for our work here. Black for the background, white for the trim, and the natural beige tone for the lettering. While you can’t really judge the depth of the stacks from this angle, there is a lot of tile there... they’re cheap and fun to break into pieces.

Step 6: Mount your design pattern onto your work area. I used a combination of spray glue intended for mounting photos, and pieces of clear tape to hold down the edges of the lettering.

Step 8: As you can see, this is where our adventure ended. Actually, that isn’t exactly accurate. I did in fact finish the edge of the table, with the bull nose rounded edges facing outward. While this might seem like some sort of achievement, and believe me it took me friggin long enough, I was really rather stuck with what I left myself to work with when it came to the next layer in. The pieces of tile were simply too large. Not to mention incredibly obtusely shaped. From this point, I scrapped entirely what i’d done, and started breaking the tile down into smaller and smaller pieces. The biggest problem I encountered was when the pieces get to a certain size, they’re not all that easy to break in an orderly and useful fashion. So, this is where I quit the project and packed it away for a while.

Introduction: Well, had an old coffee table donated to me in the past, and the top of it was a bit scuffed and marred and was actually beginning to crack, so I decided to resurface it, in the most difficult way imaginable... a mosaic

Step 1: First, to prevent any damage to the frame of the table, I taped off the edges with simple edging tape intended for painting.

Step 3: Pull the tape off. If you were slightly reckless with your electric sander and allowed it to run rickshaw on the edging tape, you’ll probably want to use a simple straight razor to scrap those little blue fragments away. The nice freshly sanded top will allow the grout to take.

Step 5: Figure out what sort of design you’d like to make with your tile. Then, design it up in photoshop, print it out, cut it out, and lay it out on your work area.

Step 7: Start laying tile. Please keep in mind this is an incredibly arduous and unrewarding task. Its important to leave gaps for the grout. If its any comfort, logically within the massive box of broken tiles, there is always a piece that will match the edge you’re looking for.