How To: Refurbish Old Furniture

Moving into a new house is expensive. Renovating it before? Even more so. Over the past few months, I have been working with my dad to renovate one of his houses in my home town of Fredericksburg. It's this cute little yellow house with a back deck and backyard. When I first considered moving in and went to check it out in January, it was in desperate need of some work and a little TLC.  Now that it's (mostly) finished, it has been well worth all the hard work to see the finished results. I love it.

While I bought a few new pieces of furniture, mostly book cases and a new couch, I didn't want to buy TOO much. Plus, I didn't have the money! So I decided to fix up some old pieces I found in the old garage and that people I knew were getting rid of. It's truly amazing what a paint job can do, if done correctly.

There's one in particular that now that it's refurbished, I have completely fallen in love with.

Here is the piece before. I found it in my dad's garage and there were no other matching pieces or sets, it was all alone.

One of the coolest parts of the piece, is this little shelf within the drawer.  It slides across the top. Pretty cool, right?

To refinish it, I got a de-glosser, some black paint complete with primer, and some painters tape. The de-glosser helps remove the 'shine' or any top coat that is on the wood so that the paint will adhere to the wood better. You could sand it down too if you prefer that. I did do some sanding around a few of the edges and a few scuff marks so that the paint would be smooth.

Here it is after the deglosser.

After deglossing it, I used the painters tape to make the edges. I didn't paint the inside of the piece, just the outside and it's edges.

Below is show with the painters tape and after the first coat of paint.

Once I put the tape on, I applied the first coat with a brush. I consider spray paint, but since you can't 100% control where the paint goes, I opted for painting it myself. I applied the first coat, and then waited 24 hours for the second coat. Then I waited another 24 hours before moving it into my bedroom and applying the knobs.

I bought some beautiful turquoise knobs at World Market for about $4 a piece to stay within my budget. I also saw some gorgeous ones at Anthropologie that were just a tad more expensive, but just as beautiful.

Once I put on the new knobs, it was ready to go. I added a painting of mine, a few decorations, some jewelry, and voila!

I forgot to take photos of this one before and after, but a friend of mine was getting rid of this coffee table. It was this redwood, brown wood color and didn't have much going for it. So I bought some flat black spray paint, placed it on a tarp and painted it.

It changed the look and feel of the piece so much, that the person who gave it to me didn't even recognize it! I bought some fake flowers at Target and put them in a few Mason Jars I had for decoration on top. And the basket underneath is filled with magazines!

I thought it turned out really lovely in my little living room :)