My ironing board is from a dumpster.

It’s true. Years ago, I lived in a large apartment complex in a college town and a lot of perfectly useful things were deposited unjustly near the dumpster (including this chair and this other chair).

Before

I threw out the original cover (of course! I’m not crazy.), and replaced it long ago, but I guess there was some rusty metal under there and over the years, the rust has crept through the replacement cover.

Before

I’m always afraid the rust is going to transfer onto some of my fabric. So much so, that I usually throw a towel over the ironing board. (Notice I said “fabric” and not “clothes.” I’m not going to kid you. We really don’t iron clothes on a regular basis in this house. Too much work.)

Before

I needed to address this rust problem post haste.

I stripped it naked, then primed the table top with a rusty metal primer.

After that was dry, I took some gloss black spray paint and did the whole thing, legs and all. I had both the primer and the paint on hand, so I didn’t have to buy them for this little makeover.

A couple of months ago, I picked up a new ironing board cover at IKEA for about $5. But stupid me, I didn’t measure and it didn’t fit my non-IKEA board.

I briefly contemplated making my own cover from some old curtain fabric my grandma gave to me, but then I noticed this tag. I wasn’t sure if that meant it couldn’t be ironed or just didn’t have to be. But I erred on the side of caution. I didn’t want to go through the time and trouble of making a cover only to have it melt under a hot iron.

With two strikes against me, I started getting tired of this project and just wanted to have a functional ironing board again. So I grabbed this blue/green cover at Target for about $8. (A new basic ironing board with a cover only costs $13-14, so I probably should have investigated that route before I started this project.)

And then I was done. And I could get back to something more interesting.