I strip the table down to find out the center of the top was not solid oak like I thought…bummer. To cover that center plywood I spray paint the center flat black. Then I make a spray paint template of some Koi fish with the Glowforge laser cutter out of some cardboard.
I paint the Koi fish on to the table top with a metallic gold paint.
Stain the bare oak with Golden Oak 210 from Min Wax. Touch up the gold paint template over spray with a sharpie pen. Finally seal the whole table with MinWax fast drying polyurethane clear satin. This project took about half a day of time, and I really liked the end resulting table. I am going to give this to my mom for mothers day I hope she likes it!
If you love koi there is one at GinKakuJi in Kyoto that has a head that is 30cm across. I have been lucky enough to be invited to a number of koi viewing parties but have never seen anything like it.
I used to have a koi pond that had some very large koi (about 2.5 feet long) then we had a dust storm that did something bad to the pond and all of the fish died within days.
