Decorating on the cheap

I'm always trying to find new ways to decorate my house.  Most of the time I don't want or have extra money to spend.  So I try to use things that I already have around my house that have seen better days.  My latest project has been our living room coffee table.  We've had the coffee table for over 17 years and has seen alot of action.  When we got the coffee table it was a nice square pine table.

Here's the table looking oh so nice 10 years ago.  Well after my kids used the table to color, dance on, hit golf balls from it was looking pretty darn shabby.  So I decided to paint it.  I figured if I didn't like it I could always repaint it or set fire to it.

So I painted the table red and inside square black.  Then I decided to make the inside square a checker board.  I graphed that out.and painted every other square brown.

So this is my finished checker board game table.  I still have to do some touch up and seal it with poly. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.  So basically this cost me my time since I already had all the materials.  So being frugal isn't  about doing without it's about making what you already have better.