100 Things 2 Do: Chess Table

I only have half a project for you today….

The weekend was full of activities that took priority over my blog - not that I don't love each and every one of you for following me - but THIS

is what I love most in the world!

Season-closing game and pizza party.

MY daughter scored the first goal and the closing goal of a 2 - 2 game.
I'm not going to lie - my head is more swollen with her talent than it ever was with my own. I yelled and screamed, and probably embarrassed the heck out of her, but I was just through-the-roof proud!

So when we got back, I only had time to tackle part of a project….
This ugly table.

I put it on Kijiji for FREE and no one took it. That says a lot.

My neighbour (thanks Lara!) suggested I try turning the top into a chess table.

BRILLIANT.

I mean, no one is really going to want a smokey glass top right?

(Plus I wanted to try it and see if it worked.)
I bought mine at Michael's for $40 - so this is a much better deal;

I measured off the table to get the widest (but equal on all four sides) lengths for the outside edge.
Then I divided that (in this case 14"/ 35.5cm) by 8 squares.

I know, when you look at this you think - none of those squares look even at all.

But here you can see that I was only etching in certain squares that had been outlined at the correct size. Anything the wrong size was taped off as a 'clear' square.

Confusing?
Tell me about it.
I counted every square off "white, clear, white, clear…" to make sure I wasn't etching the wrong ones.

Whew! Round 1 looks about right.
I left the outside edges taped and just removed the interior lines.

Then I retaped again to mark where the next rows of etching should go.

The blue X's are to remind me where the etched squares were already.
Far more thinking than I'd planned to do today let me tell you.

Almost done - I wanted a frosted edge to delineate where the edge of the board was, so I taped inside the board edges and etched outwards towards the wood.