Bargain Nightstand

I'm always looking for sturdy pieces of furniture that I can use in my boys' room so when I saw this mid century find I jumped at the chance to use it. It had a bad paint job but I was just going to repaint it so I didn't really care.

BEFORE

AFTER


I used leftover paint from his room...most of it is the same color as his walls; I added a little black to darken the paint and painted front drawer and trim.

Gift crate re-do

I tend not to be able to think straight under stress so I haven't had a lot of projects like this but I'm always looking for projects that involve repurposing.

This was like 50 cents because one of the slats was broken but the nail was still in place and my hot glue gun was ready!

Up close and personal

Missing slat

The key to these projects is to do it as quickly so you can have a finished product to look at. I used spray paint and TADA...we have a new fruit bowl!

Lamp/Magazine Table

Lamp Magazine Table

I don't even know what this thing is called, I just know it was 1/2 price day at one of the local thrift stores and I needed a cheap fix for a nightstand for my soon to be 13 year old. Sooo...after checking to make sure the lamp worked, I hauled it into the back of my Camry and took it home! 

Normally, I don't think it fits my design aesthetics but it is FUNCTIONAL and it is durable, being made of wood and metal I figured it can not be destroyed and if it is I haven't wasted any money on it.

The lamp shade looks like it was made with a paper treatment with leaves impressions which I promptly removed and just watered down the paint I was using and painted the shade, see below:

BEFORE

AFTER
I don't know what happened to all the 'before' pictures

Stripe

YAY it works!

Red China Hutch

I had my eye on this hutch for awhile and the shop that it was at marked it down to $100 so I jumped on it and said: SOLD! I knew that I didn't have the time to finish it then so it sat in the garage for awhile but since I  graduated I'm pushing forward on projects and this was one of them. I recommend if you paint ANYTHING red, PRIME PRIME PRIME...did I say PRIME?

The bottom I sprayed white primer and the top I sprayed gray primer...go with grey or just paint over the wood, the finish wasn't really great and I probably could have roughed up the surface with a sanding block and just painted it...I've always done this in the past and the finish is fine. I have been everyone's blog posts about painting furniture and they sand and sand and sand...I've had this tested and true method for years before painting furniture was 'in' and the paint last so I'm just gonna go with the flow from now on. 
The thing is the paint was semi-glass so I wanted to make sure it took well...I got it on sale at Home Depot already mixed, generally I would only use SATIN paint or even Flat but I'm working inside of a budget and I got this Martha Stewart brand gallon of paint for $11!

BEFORE

Primed and ready to go!  
                   

I spray painted the existing handles (I wanted to use different handles but this piece is old and I would have had to special order them because the spacing wasn't the same as modern handles), the cardboard is from the 24 pack water bottle packs--inventive, huh?

They turned out better than I thought, now I'm happy that didn't invest anymore money on the handles/knobs.

AFTER
Home in the breakfast room