My Big Project This Week

Recently we had our house painted inside. We've now lived here for over 7 years and the walls were looking pretty dingy. So along with the new paint, I have been trying to do a couple other updates. We have one big great room that has really tall two-story ceilings and I have always struggled with trying to fill the space. I had a bookshelf in the corner that I liked but it was really small and this week I found something that works!

I love hunting through the old furniture at Salvation Army and Goodwill to find things that I can repaint and redo to my liking. So I found this big ole piece of oak junk at Salvation Army for $35.55. I knew it would be a lot of work but I had a vision.  Here is what it looked like when I bought it:



Notice the sweet 1990s oak, the frosted glass in the doors and the lovely hardware.

I knew what I wanted to do - replace the hardware, take the bottom doors off, move the shelves around a bit and add a new shelf. Then take out the glass and add chicken wire, oh yeah, and add a back pice to hold it all together.  Here are a few pics of the process:

I painted a coat of primer, and then a coat of the bluish color I liked. After letting that dry for 24 hours (did I mention the weather was in the 90s this week and it was REALLY hot working on this in the garage.) I took out my new sander and a file and my antiquing stain and went at it. The thing I like about distressing furniture is that you can't mess it up. So I had to hit the whole thing a few times with a sledgehammer to get the nails in? Who cares, love the dents it makes.

So after all that work - here it is, and I love it! Though it did occur to me that I took an old piece of crap, and made it into . . . another old piece of crap!