Good news: I finally have a place to put my feet up in the beach house living room. Or, as Sherry would say: we finally have a coffee table!
light fixture / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar sofa / similar curtains / curtain rods
This was a DIY that cost a fraction of the high-end alternative, so we’re excited. If you follow our InstaStories you already know we swapped the rug in this room for a different one after these photos were taken, so expect a follow-up post about that and another small dining room update in a week or two. For now, back to the coffee table.
We actually had the table base for a long time, but it stayed topless for months. A neighbor had the wooden octagonal base and had planned to add a top but never did, so she posted it on our neighborhood board for seven dollars. After driving it home and letting it sit in our garage, the base finally moved with us to the beach house last fall — where it continued to sit without a top until last month.
Our first plan was to get a stone top custom cut. Marble would have looked beautiful, and quartz was another option, but quotes from two stone yards — even for remnant pieces — ranged from $700 to $900. That was far higher than expected because the tabletop is 38″ at its widest and the octagonal shape increases cutting complexity.
So we shifted from “buy a stone top” to “make a stone-like top ourselves.” We considered faux stone laminate, a painted wood top imitating marble, and other ideas, but ultimately chose a white concrete finish to get a chunky, stone-like appearance at a far lower cost. The project kept getting pushed back behind larger jobs like installing the kitchen and building bunk beds, so for a while I had to awkwardly rest my feet on the rim of the bare base each visit. Please feel sorry for me.
We were concerned that a poured solid concrete slab would be extremely heavy and prone to cracking without extra support, and the idea of little kids bumping heads on a solid chunk of concrete felt risky. Instead, we made a wooden top and covered it with Ardex Feather Finish, a thin concrete skim coat we’d used before to give laminate counters a concrete look.
Making the Wood Coffee Table Top
We bought a 4′ x 4′ sheet of 3/4″ plywood so the top would be rigid and resist sagging. To mark the cuts, I flipped the table base onto the plywood and traced the outline. Using a circular saw, I trimmed the plywood into an octagon that fit the base precisely (no overhang yet).
Next I cut eight pieces of 1×2 whitewood to form a border around the plywood. Each piece required a 22.5-degree miter so they would meet around the octagon. I glued and nailed them to the plywood edge to create a slightly larger top with a modest overhang and the appearance of a thicker tabletop without much added weight. I also screwed the finished top down into the base from underneath for security.
After nailing the trim in place, I filled gaps and nail holes with wood putty. The tabletop wasn’t a perfect octagon so some corners needed extra filling to get tighter joints. This step helped create a cleaner surface before the concrete skim coat.
Applying the Concrete Finish
We used white Ardex Feather Finish for this tabletop. It comes as a dry powder that mixes with water; the kit required mixing in small batches and applying with trowels. For tools we used mixing buckets, larger and smaller trowels, and a palm sander with assorted grits for smoothing between coats.
The bag suggested a 2:1 ratio of powder to water, but I preferred a slightly looser mix — thicker than pancake batter but still able to spread easily. I applied the first coat with larger trowels across the top and smaller tools for the edges. Ardex requires more than one coat, so the first layer focuses on coverage rather than perfection.
After several hours of drying I scraped off any drips from the underside and sanded the top with an 80-grit pad to remove hard ridges and prepare for the second coat. The initial sanding revealed trowel marks and small pockets where the mix hadn’t fully smoothed out, but that was expected after the first application.
The second coat went on thinner and I took more care to smooth it. For finishing I sanded progressively from 80 grit down to 120 and then 220 so the final surface would be very smooth. Once sealed and finished, the result looked like a solid, glossy white stone top — but lighter and less brittle than real concrete would have been.
Sealing the Concrete
There are many choices for sealing concrete. For kitchen counters we used a food-safe eco-sealer in the past, but for a durable, glossy finish on this table we chose a high-gloss wet-look sealer. That high shine helps mimic polished stone and delivers a very hard, protective surface.
I applied multiple thin coats with a small foam roller — a couple of coats spaced a few hours apart, and a third coat later for added protection. The gallon I used hardly got touched, so I’ll keep some on hand for yearly touch-ups if needed.
After the final coat cured we brought the table back inside and let it sit for a week before placing anything on it. The result is a coffee table that feels solid and looks like a glossy white stone slab, but without the weight and fragility of a true stone or poured slab.
light / ceiling medallion / similar rug / similar curtains / TV stand / similar chair
The white top brightens the space and balances the darker rug and sofa, tying in with other white accents like the bookshelf and curtains. Up close, the surface still shows subtle trowel marks and slight imperfections, which give it character and prevent it from looking like a plastic sheet. Those small variations recreate the movement you’d find in natural stone.
We’ve discussed a few finishing tweaks, like darkening the wood base to disguise the lighter edges or painting the base glossy white to emphasize the leg shape. For now, though, I’ve argued we should just kick up our feet and enjoy having an actual coffee table. That seems fair.
bookcase / similar pink pillow / similar blue pillow / white faux wood window blinds
We’ve also been making a few other furniture updates in the room — since these photos were taken we’ve painted and recovered two armchairs and added more seating — so there are more small changes coming. If you have questions about anything in the beach house, including paint colors or sources, we keep a page with all that information available.
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