Giving A New Look To An Older Piece by Guest Blogger

Giving A New Look To An Older Piece!

By Danyell Halvorson

 Before & After

I was recently driving home and saw a fundraising rummage sale and some furniture… and for that, I always stop.
I’m going to tell you today how you can take a $15 dollar piece of furniture and turn it into a completely functional, beautiful center piece for under $40!
First, you need to find that special piece. This one caught my eye and stole a piece of my heart. From the second I seen it, I knew that it had a special place in my home- right underneath my TV. I’ve been on the hunt for a new TV stand, but was not going to pay a significant amount of money for it.

  First things first, you need to give it a bath. Wipe it down to remove any grime (and sometimes that old furniture smell…you know what I am talking about)! 

Then the sander comes in. I use a palm sander and 80 grit paper- we’ve become BFF’s over the past several months. I remove doors and knobs, and hinges and drawers and sand away. 

For this piece, I had my lovely husband use a router to cut out the front doors. I knew I wanted this piece for my tv stand, and putting my DVD player and tv box behind closed doors wouldn’t be functional.

I sanded down the doors and painted them “Parchment Paper.” You will only need a quart of this and the nice people at Home Depot have the formula for it. Its an off-white paint, and will work well in the living room as it will go with all my furniture. 

     After 2 coats of paint (drying each coat between), I was ready to put in my chicken wire. Usually I would use a staple gun, but I chose to use those silver thumb tacks to give it a different look. I encourage you to use a hammer to push them all the way in or else your thumb will be sore for days! 

 

Next, I painted my drawers with the same color- inside and out. 2 coats- each drying between the next. and I painted the entire outside of the stand. Except the top, because that came perfectly tiled, one of the reasons I loved this piece!

While paint was drying (theres a lot of that happening with re-doing furniture), I scrubbed my hardware (hinges and knobs) with baking soda and let them dry. Then i painted them with a fresh layer (and then 2) of spray paint. I used “stainless steel” because it is silvery and sparkly, and who doesn't love both of those? 

I then chose to paint the inside of the bottom the cabinet in a darker slate gray, to make it look deeper and darker= bigger. I picked up this paint from the clearance rack in Walmart. You know, the one they put all the paint on that didn't quite turn out the color it should when they were mixing it? At 50% off, this paint was mixed just for me- and my budget! 

While the inside of the cabinet dries, I decided to save some time painting and use contact paper to line the shelves of the cabinet and the inside of the drawers. I picked up beautiful contact paper from the dollar store…yes, the dollar store! $1 a roll and I only needed 4 rolls. Score! 

Now the hard work is done and the fun part comes in- the beating. Well, its not really beating, its more like distressing- and you’ll need your handy dandy palm sander again. I took my sander to everything I painted (its totally dry now) and started sanding places and edges to give it a worn look. You can do as much or as little of this as you want! I sand until I expose the natural wood of the piece. Then, I want to add a little accent so I get my spray paint out again and lightly spray parts of the drawers, cabinet doors and the cabinet. This gives it a shimmer and will tie in the new hinges and knobs.   

Make sure to use a damp cloth to wipe away all of the dust and residue from sanding, or else your next coat won’t be smooth! Once that is dry, its time to add our sealer. I am in LOVE with the Minwax Polycrylic Clear Satin coat. Its water based and easy to clean up and won’t yellow like an oil based protective finish will.

The last finishing touches are replacing the knobs, hinges and doors! Putting it all back together and stepping back to see what you just created! 

This piece took me 3 days. Thats pretty decent considering paint drying time. I made sure I sanded everything that needed to be sanded and made sure I painted everything that needed to be painted at the same time, so I wasn't going in circles waiting for it to dry.  

I hope you enjoyed this and let your treasure hunt begin! Nothing is more satisfying than creating something yourself and saving some money while doing it!

~Danyell

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Shared by Donna as a Guest Host on Turn It Up Tuesday!