table cloth

I have a nice shiny white table I got from Ikea years ago for my kitchen. But, it's nice shiny white finish has been scuffed and rubbed away in places. So I use a tablecloth. It's easier to wash down a plastic cloth with a washcloth, than it is to clean off a pock-marked table that has leaves and crevices to clean out.

My last tablecloth got stained by too much tomato sauce. I know you're thinking. Hey, Vinyl is awsome. It won't stain. And it wont, except for tomato sauce. Seriously. Polyvinyl chloride is pretty resilient stuff, but when it comes to the acidic oil of tomato, it's toast. So my white lacy vinyl table cloth is covered in orange stains even after washing in the washer.

My husband asked me to get another one because the one I had, had fake lace embossed on it and it ruined his writing.

Sarge: "Hey, can you get another table cloth that's not all 'bumpy'? This one is hard to write on."

I had been thinking about it for awhile and didn't see any cool ones. There was the american flag vinyl, there was the red check vinyl, there was even red check vinyl with little ants. I looked into oil cloth but couldn't find exactly what I wanted. I thought about just a basic fabric tablecloth covered with a clear vinyl layer. But it would slip around too much. So I had a moment of genius.

Contact paper. There's not always a huge selection of contact paper. But I found some through  decor8.
It noted a website called Aubuchon Hardware.

Here were the two that I decided on.

I hadn't gotten around to ordering them yet and when one late evening trip to the Dollar Store to get chili and brownie mix (I have exciting tastes eh?) I found the polka dot one for just a dollar a roll.

Ha! I am so cool!

I quickly got two and then waited for about 15 minutes while the cashier had an issue with pricing on another customers slippers. That's a whole other story.

When I got home I tried to put it on the table but contact paper is sticky and my son likes to help with my "projects".

So when he went to bed I put it on the table taking care to match up the patterns. Which was hard and impossible so I just cut off the edges until half dots were gone and said to hell with registering the pattern because there wasn't an easily discernible repeat.

Here is my rewarded efforts.

Pretty polka dot table.

The only problem with contact paper is that it's made out of vinyl. Which means it will stain with tomato sauce. And the edges peel up when they come in contact with my son's prying fingernails. So, to protect the contact paper I was using to protect my pock-marked table I added a clear vinyl plastic tablecloth. To protect my tablecloth. I know, it will stain too and I'm just this* close to crazy. But at least my table looks cool right?

Ruth