Faux Marble Top Coffee Table

A quick and simple tutorial for how to transform furniture to look like marble with marble look contact paper.

Once upon a time, there was this magical place called the IKEA As-Is section…

You know where this story is going, right? Haha!

Last week, I trekked it to IKEA for a couple of items for the kitchen refresh, but it’s practically a sin to check out before stopping in to the As-Is section. (I have a slight addiction to this place.)

And there was this one little coffee table (the Vittsjo, it’s called) hidden amongst the reject boxes for 50% off that I couldn’t pass up. Because as soon as I saw it, an idea popped into my head.

It was definitely the easiest little furniture makeover ever that I finished in record time for Trash to Treasure Tuesday. (You can check out the rest of the T2T girls’ thrifty makeovers at the bottom of this post, or you can see past ones here.)

I’d seen these pricey designer marble-topped metal coffee tables lately, and I thought why not try out a knock-off version with this $40 as-is glass one? Maybe since this one was sort of new, it doesn’t really count as thrifty, but I won’t tell if you won’t.

Supplies Used: (Some affiliate links are provided below.)

Marble printed contact paper
X-acto knife and/or scissors
Wallpaper smoother (or even just an old credit card can do the trick)

1. I took the glass top out of the coffee table first and laid it on the floor. And then rolled out the marble printed contact paper and trimmed it to the length I needed for the entire glass top.

2. Starting at one end of the table top, I separated an inch width of the contact paper from its waxy paper backing, lined it up against the glass edge, and pressed it into place, smoothing out any air bubbles.

3. Then, I gradually worked inch by inch removing the waxy paper backing from the contact paper and smoothed out more bubbles with the wallpaper smoother.

4. Once I had the entire sheet of contact paper pressed onto the tabletop and smoothed out, I used the tip of the X-acto knife to poke holes in any remaining air bubbles and pressed them out.

5. To finish, I just wrapped the excess contact paper around the edges like a present and placed it back into the coffee table.

The entire project took all of 10 minutes. Woot! I can’t believe how great it looks!

I decided to leave the bottom board out to give it the clean lines to mimic the high-end version, but it could work either way.

It looks so much like this $600 coffee table from West Elm, but it cost me less than $50 for contact paper and all. As long as no one tries to sit on it, no one will know, right?

Even the glossiness of the contact paper makes it feel like cool, smooth marble.

I really doubt that I’ll hang onto it since glass coffee tables and little kids don’t mix all that well, so I’ll probably end up selling it or giving it to a friend. But I’m so glad I got to have some fun with this one.

Oh, and if you hadn’t noticed, we’ve been working on a couple of small changes in the living room, which you’ll see more of tomorrow. 😉

I’m definitely hanging onto this marble paper idea for future reference though. I’d be dying to use this stuff on a laundry room countertop if I actually had a laundry room countertop.

You can check out the rest of my Trash to Treasure blogger friends’ transformations for the month below too: