End table

Does your family have that one piece of furniture that nobody wants but nobody can get rid of?   Yep, that is this end table that I am about to up-cycle.   It was all scratched up and out of date but it was my great grandmas and nobody could get rid of it!  So, of course when we were in desperate need of furniture, I took it!  I knew I would paint it and turn it in to a beautiful table.  Here is how it went!

This was before I discovered bonding primer and I had to sand around all of those little spools.. ugh.  It took forever! 

I didn't have any primer so I just started with the paint.  I used a white eggshell paint.   It took about 3 coats to finish it completely.

Even though this is extremely poor picture quality you can see how beautiful it is now!  We love it and it adds to our look in the living room.  

What do you have that would look great with a coat of paint on it?  

Up-cycled Fancy Bed Board

When Eric and I were moving into our apartment, the goal was to not spend any money on furniture.  That's right, I said ZERO DOLLARS.   I think we accomplished that (or at least spent no more that $50 all together)   How did we do it?  We searched through relatives basements, attics, and sheds to find things that could serve a purpose for a little while or that could eventually be turned into something magnificent!  We did buy a few things from garage sales, but only if they were the right price (practically free).

This head board is one of those free things that we got!  Nobody wanted it in our big extended family so it ended up in my mother's basement with a mattress in it!  Eric, who struggles to see how things can be transformed, was not too fond of the bed when we first got it.  I didn't like it either!  It was old, outdated, and just ugly!  But, I saw past the fake wood finish and saw the potential that this head board had!  After living with it for the past 5 months, I finally tackled it during one of my many snow days I've had.

This is what it started as….  ew.

I was REALLY not looking forward to sanding in all of the cracks, so I went to Ace Hardware and I found this amazing stuff!  It's called bonding primer and if you use this, you don't have to SAND!!  IT'S A MIRACLE!  

So, I began priming.   It is always so excited to put the first brush of paint on something.  I just love seeing the transformation begin from something looking so ugly and mundane to looking beautiful, with just a simple coat of white paint!   This is after the first coat, the wood was really dark so I think I ended up doing 2 coats of primer. 

After two coats of primer, I just did one coat of paint. I probably should have done two, but we were sort of in a time crunch so we settled with one.  It looks great!

 I just used regular eggshell white latex paint.  

We let it dry over night and then put it back on the bed! And voila, our bed is transformed!  It went from looking like a random bed from a relatives basement (oh wait, it was) to looking like a beautiful master piece that truly belongs in this room!  Our bedroom is starting to look more like a cohesive environment, everything is slowly getting painted white because it was so ugly to begin with.   Notice the lamp-stand next to the table, that thing was SO UGLY before.  I really wish I had a picture. 

These little doo-hickys are supposed to go on the ends of the bed but we only have one.   I'm currently searching for something like this to put on it.  I'll let you guys know when I find them! 

Here's a closer look at the finished product. 

So here it is!  The final full transformation! 

Thanks for reading and go paint something ugly and make it beautiful!