BEFORE & AFTER: Mosaic Heart Tile Table Makeover

I’m about to give you a heart on for a table. I swear you won’t look at any old table ever the same after I share this mosaic heart tile table makeover with you. My friends at Value Village challenged me to find something preloved (and probably forgotten) in their stores and it give it a DIY makeover. They obviously follow this blog because..umm..that’s kinda what I do all the time. Challenge accepted! I have to admit I’m quite as a passionate about DIY as my partner. Although, his job as a welder does sort of give him an unfair advantage when it comes to this kind of stuff. He’s always going on about the crazing amount of DIY projects he can do now that he has the latest welding tank!

So I found what looks like an old IKEA table that probably had some good years in a student or 1st home then left behind for more expensive pastures. The table cost me $10. It’s not the worse I’ve seen but it’s not in amazing condition and it really just looks inexpensive and blah.

And here it is after a heartfelt makeover! Talk about a transformation. This table went from being the most forgettable blah piece of furniture to a unforgettable focal piece of a room. I was inspired by this heart tile floor I saw on A Beautiful Mess last year and decided it would make a great table top.

This is one of those perfect examples where the whole measure twice, cut once thing is mega important except it’s measure twice, only go to the hardware store once. To save yourself mulitple trips and trying to guess how many tiles you need of each color you need to do some pre-planning. If you have a program like Adobe Illustrator or some graph paper, take your measurements and make yourself a grid and mock up of your pattern. You need to know the size of your tiles to do this accurately. If buying tiles online at sites like tilersplace, the measurements are all laid out for you which saves you a job. Once you have all the math figured out you can go ahead and buy what you need.

Other than the tiles you’ll need some tile adhesive, tile grout (I like the premixed kind), a trowel, a big sponge and possibly a tile cutter (depending on your pattern & size) which are all available at the hardware store. (note: if you have some tiling plans in your future, it’s worth it to buy a better tile cutter. If the project is a big one then you might want to choose a tile cutter or wet saw, depending on the amount you’ll need to cut) Now depending on your DIY skill level, this project may be a bit tricky or a piece of cake. I had some experience from tiling my kitchen so I pretty much knew what I was getting into. If you’re really not into the tiles you could always use paint and tape and get a similar effect. The tiles cost me about $25 and I already had all the tile materials. It may not be as budget friendly as a coat of paint but the one-of-a-kind end result is pretty priceless and it if you did happen to find a similar table, I’m sure it would cost way more than $100.

Here’s a quick how-to guide of my process. You would usually apply adhesive to the whole surface then apply the tile but in this case to make sure I didn’t mess up the pattern, I applied the adhesive while the tiles were still laying on the surface.

Don’t get too concerned with minor spacing issues because the grout will fix most of it. As you can see I did have to cut my edges and they definitely aren’t perfect but they look 10x better once they were grouted.

Once the grout is completely dry (follow the instructions on the package) you can give your table a final wipe to get rid of all the residue and you’ll end up with your final piece!

This table just went from thrift shop dust collector to your new conversation piece. I think this lover may be living on my patio for the summer, we’ll see. The lesson is always check out your local Value Village for something you’re looking for…you never know what you’ll find!
If you liked this post, check out our Project Gallery for more fun DIY projects.