Trash To Treasure

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"
A new hobby of mine is to refurbish old furniture. When you're constantly living on a budget sometimes its hard to come up with the money to buy what it is you really want to buy. I could easily charge stuff to a card but as I'm newly out of credit card debt (YAY!!) why would I go back down that road??? So I recently decided to let my imagination run wild and let my own creativity take the wheel. Outcome: some pretty cool furniture that holds a special place in my heart because I made it what it is now :-)

The first time I decided to do this I got a piece of old furniture at the "Red, White and Blue" thrift store. I was shopping with my mom and after age 55 you're considered a senior citizen lol! One day a week the seniors get half-off the ticketed price. I selected a beat up but sturdy wood piece. It was originally $8.50 so I got it for $4.25...I'm kicking myself for not taking a before shot! Take my word for it, it was just a dull brown wood with some scratches and nicks in it. It wasn't anything special but I saw something in it. I decided I would use it in my scrapbooking section and put my Cricut machine on it. I spent a weekend working on it. I first sanded out all of the imperfections. I then primed it and painted it black. I trimmed the drawer in left over hot pink paint from my sisters salon. Lastly I put left over pink and silver wall-paper remnants (also from my sisters salon) on the top and in the back shelf. My dad completed the piece by polishing up the knobs for me. I'll never forget when I was carrying it into my house...2 ladies were walking dogs and they stopped me to ask where I bought this piece of furniture. I told them the story and they loved it! At that point I really felt a sense of accomplishment! The project cost me a total of $4.25 since I used all left over paint and wallpaper from my sisters salon...talk about a bargain! Below is a visual of the piece. Again, I wish I had the before photos!

This past weekend I was back at it again. When I was on the house tour a few weeks ago I saw a cute idea in an attic. The woman who owned the house had a little red ladder and she simply placed a plant on it and it added something different to the room. I just raved over it and my mom told me I could easily do that. She gave me an old ladder she had at our cottage. The sides and top were painted green and the steps were unpainted when I began. (I took the "before" picture after I had started painting...as you can tell I'm not too good at remembering to take those before pictures!) I decided to paint it with the same left over hot pink paint from the salon. I'm keeping the piece on my deck but when winter comes I'll move it into my office and it will now match :-) Always thinking right?! Here's my new piece...I think it's too cute and it cost only my time to do it!

Also this weekend I helped in giving my future home a little facelift. In order for the sale of the house to go through some areas needed re-painted. Dave, the man selling to me, and myself spent all-day Sunday chipping the garage doors and painting them a new fresh green color (Behr Paint: Promenade) Below is the after shots :-) One of these weekends coming up that I have nothing going on I'm going to actually trim the boxes in a shade of burgundy (Behr Paint: Tawny Port)...I'll post when completed!

Another piece I've been working on is an old trunk my grandfather gave to my dad. You can't really tell in the picture but it has this cool flower embossing all over it. As soon as I saw it I knew I could do good things to it! This piece really needs some TLC! It's missing a wheel so it's totally lopsided!

So far I've only gotten to clean up the inside of the trunk. It had two layers of old wall-paper inside of it and I spent a good hour and a half scraping it all off. The first layer came off in one piece, it was that bottom layer that was pretty tricky and time-consuming. Removing the wallpaper really helped take out the musty smell inside the trunk.

Next step is to stain the inside...I think (and hope!)this step will ultimately demolish the funky smell.

I'll let you know how it goes! So far this project also has cost me nothing but my time.