My Craigslist Steal

I am always so jealous when I see people go "oh I found this giant piece of furniture on Craigslist for $1 and I transformed it into the centerpiece of my house"... because that never happens to me. Everything around here on Craigslist is 99% of the time a rip off. So when I found a nighstand for $10, a day after ours literally fell apart, I was shocked, and grabbed that bad boy up.

Here he is... ahem.. feel free to ignore anything you see in the background there... in my defense the garage is sooo not my territory!

I kinda wished I could cut the designs out of the corners because I wasn't crazy about them, but I wasn't brave enough to try, so I left them as is.

See that handle? Would have been nice to remove it, but it was sealed with two nails that were not moving for anyone... you'll notice my paint marks later... OH WELL!

30 minutes of sanding and about 600 coats of paint later.....

Like the paint on the handle? sigh.

I debated about scuffing it up to 'antique' it but with nothing else in my room like that, I was afraid it would just look beat up. I figured I could always do it later, so I left it alone.

Yay for Craigslist Deals!

Dresser Re-Do

Holy Cow... it has been a really long time since I blogged.  I have at least 5 projects to share, I just haven't had a minute to breathe!  Enter new job and a six month old.  Life is super crazy.   Anyway, enough excuses.

If you remember from this post Josh's sister, Jenny is having a baby.  Scratch that, HAD a baby!!  Baby Olivia was born on 1/24/11 at 2am.  She is perfect!  Roll back a few months ago, when I was looking thru Jenny's registry around the time of her shower.  She had a super cute dresser on her registry that unfortunately she didn't get.  I talked her into taking it off the registry, and letting me find one on Craigslist to refinish for her.  She ended up being more involved in that the dresser we found was closer to her (she's about an hour and a half away) so we played musical dressers in family member's cars until the dresser made its way up the coast to me.   As usual I forgot to take a picture before I started, but remembered to stop early enough and take a few shots.  It was actually in good shape except for a nick in the bottom corner, and Jenny wanted it white.  The hearts were metal pull outs that popped right out and were so simple to spray paint.

I must pause to share with you a very valuable lesson I learned about painting in the cold (even modest California cold) weather.  After I sanded the dresser (So excited that Josh decided that week to go use his X-mas Home Depot gift card to buy a sander!) I began to paint.  I knew it would take a while to dry so I would do one coat, and then come back out an hour later.   When I decided it would be the last coat, I was generous and so super careful to not leave streaks.  I practically skipped out to the garage the next morning to check things out.  Well when you put a generous coat of paint on in the winter months, it doesn't have time to dry fast enough and leaves huge nasty drip marks. SIGH.  Sand, paint, repeat. 

Anywhoooo... here is the finished product! I am so pleased with my very first furniture redo! 

This picture is from Josh's mom.  She snuck a picture of the dresser in the nursery when she stayed with Jenny for a few days. :) 

Shared on.. Domestically Speaking!

My first furniture redo!!

Ok, so it's not monumental... I didn't find this beat up gem of a way super cool dresser for $5 in the back of some store and make it into the most beautiful thing ever... but it's a start!

There is a thrift store a few blocks from work so I've stopped in a few times just to see what they had. It's not the best thrift store, in my opinion it tends to be a little over priced but I still go in, hopefully every time anyway. Well finally it paid off. I was scanning the shelves over the typical things and I spotted this little guy:

(Yay for being lazy and using my phone to take pictures.... Hi Gismo!)

Admittedly, I think it's cute as is. But alas, I don't live in a cabin in the woods, so it really doesn't match our decor. The best part: sticker price $5.99 WOOHOO! I was so excited I could have skipped to my car - even I saw my inner nerd shining thru.

I decided this piece was going to go into our room. Let me just take a minute to say, our bedroom is the most neglected room in the house. There is no design, no anything. It's a functional room with a bed, dresser and nightstand. But it becomes the dumping storing grounds for all the things in our house that don't have a home. There are piles in every corner. I've managed to keep them somewhat neat at least, but I walk in the room and just sigh. I actually have an official plan of what I want to do (an inspiration post is in my near future) I just need the money fairy to come visit our house first. So I'm hoping if I start on the smaller, less expensive things and make them into the future color scheme it will annoy me enough to just suck it up and do it all!!

Back to my project. Once the kiddos were asleep I got to work. I gave it a light sanding and wiped it down, and then taped in the inside because I definitely don't have a steady hand when it comes to edges! First I did a few coats of black, then painted the back panel white. Pretty simple!!

I was impatient and wanted to take a picture so a few more touch ups have happened since. I'd love to have it all on the wall with cute things on it but I'll just have to save that picture for when the whole room is done.