Modern Console Table from Leftover Tile

Special post by Lindi Vanderschaff of Love Create Celebrate.

Here’s some truth about my renovations…. I do not know everything I’m going to do before I start! When I made plans for my new modern entryway, I didn’t know what the design on my feature wall was going to be, or what colour of paint I would use, or how we would hang our coats, lol. I don’t think I even considered putting a table in there.  But as the room came together, it was obvious that something was missing. I looked up a few tables, but they were all out of my budget (as everything I love is! lol). So we grabbed an old console table and gave it some DIY love!

So this is the table we started with. Nothing special. I had purchased it a long time ago and now it was just sitting behind our couch waiting for a new home. Any old hallway table or entry table with an open space would work for this project too! But I really didn’t want to add it into the space as is…

What do you call that material? Rattan? I don’t know, but I knew I didn’t want it in the entry. It was the wrong texture for the space. The colour was also wrong – it’s hard to tell in the photos, but it’s that browny-black colour, and in person, looked brown. Instead I wanted something clean and modern to match the rest of my design plans.

While we were redoing our Tiled Entry Bench, a light bulb went off! What if we replaced that space on the console with tile! We had used a beautiful 6×12″ Basalt Tile on the bench, but we had some samples of the 4×16 Basalt tiles too – which would fit perfectly….Brilliant! 

How to update a console table with tile:

We started by removing the old material, which was backed by these hardboard pieces, and we kept the hardboard backing.

Next, we cut our Basalt tile pieces (which were 4×16″), using a wet saw, to the same size as the insert was before. Ours were the perfect width, so we only had to cut the height, but depending on your piece and your tile, you may need to cut both. Here’s what it looked like (above) on top of the backing hardboard. The holes are where the previous screws were and we thought – why not just reuse those holes!

Next, we wanted our modern tile to stick out, just as it did on the finished Entry Bench, so we used an Enhancing Sealer to seal the porous tile and darken the colour. Worked beautifully!

Before we set to work returning the tiles to the console, we also spent some time painting the entire furniture piece with this beautiful rich black paint (always my go-to for furniture!).

Finally, we lined up the tile pieces against the opening of the black console table, put the hardboard backing in place, and screwed it on.

A beautiful tile project that doesn’t require any grout or thinset! What could be better! This project has me inspired with so many other tile ideas – or maybe just another hallway table, lol. I hope you got some inspiration too!