Homemade Christmas #5 Baseball Bat Night Stand

Hello everyone!  I'm back.  Yesterday I was finishing up a lot of projects for Christmas, and I did a feature tutorial over at The Artsy Girl Connection Wednesday.  Marilyn was wonderful for having me!  It was a lot of fun!  If you missed my Pottery Barn Knock-off Wreath Tutorial, either go visit Marilyn, or sit tight and I'll post it soon.  Today I'm back at it again.  So I'm going to show you how I made a baseball side-table out of literally junk and plumbing pieces...LITERALLY!!!

So, I mentioned before how I played softball at DePaul. So, you can imagine how into baseball and softball I am. Well, I have lots of ball stuff around. I picked three bats from my "crap I need to do somethin with" pile and thought, "hmmmm...what can I do with this!?!" then I got-ta thinkin, yeah, I know look out right.  I remembered this thing my mom bought for me when I was playing travel softball. It had three mini bats and a small plastic ring that fit over the knobs of the bats and the little bats held a softball. (It's currently holding a ball from the Div. I Women's College World Series. It's one of prized possessions from the "glory days".) so I thought if I could just find some kind of ring, and cut a piece of wood from a scrap board or something, I could make a side table for my nephews for Christmas (Sports themed room...the Bears Helmet Lamp was for them too). Long story short, I lucked out at one of my junk stores and found a piece that was perfect. A wooden serving tray...for $0.10! Yep, I'll take it! Now for the ring...why not cut a hole in a cheeseboard? Yep, a call to daddy was in order. He makes corn-hole boards so he has a 6" drill. Perfect!! NOT! Too big. Plan B? There's not a plan B at this point. So I'm stressing to mom on the phone about how it wasn't working. She says, use like a PVC fitting or something....GENIUS!!

So, I had two, tried them both one was good the other? Not so much.

(Yes, I used good ol' ASCP in Old White and the "stitching" is just good ol' Acrylic Craft Paint.  )

Then the problem of covering it. One thing after another with this one. Paint it? Wouldn't be cool enough. And. It's a piece of plumbing. Hmmmm...looked around and saw these bad boys...styrofoam balls!! Yeah baby!! Score. Called up Some pals got some baseballs. We are in business! So I went to my jute stash and left over burlap pile. Covered the PVC "joint connector"-(Dad just told me what they are called) with jute and burlap.  Then I cut the cover off of the baseballs and used them to cover the Styrofoam balls that I had cut in half.  Awesomeness!  Secured the cover with my go to...Mr Gorilla Glue and we were in business!

Busted out the Mr. Gorilla again to further secure the bats after I screwed them together.  Then I screwed the top to the table. As I was doing that, I split the top. Had to fix it with wood filler. Let it dry. Painted, sanded, and waxed...AGAIN!

Apparently the little princess thought the table was a coat rack?

Sharing here...