Table and Four Chairs

This table and chair set was sitting in my garage for what seemed like forever. I don't have a picture of the table "before", but you can see from the chair "before" that they were all pretty beat up.

The chairs had been covered with a cute gingham print. It was obvious once I got on the underside of the chairs that this was a re-cover job, and I am guessing it was pretty recent since the fabric was in really great shape - little wear, no rips or tears, and minimal staining. The chairs were pretty damaged on the bottom, but nothing a little wood glue and wood screws could not fix.

Once I took the seat cushions off and then repaired the chairs, I painted them an off-white. I then hand distressed and poly'd them. Lastly I put the cushions back on.

The table involved different preparations as it had a very heavy coat of awful polyurethane on it. I don't enjoy working with chemical strippers, so to get all this gunk off I had to use a manual stripping tool and then sanded it down. It was very time consuming and messy, but it needed to be done to make the table top uniform. Finally I was able to paint it, distress it, and poly it.

My favorite part of this project was working on the table legs. They had neat little cracks and crevices that distressed really well. And now it is finally out of my garage!

Painted, Distressed, & Glazed Chest

Another find I wish I had taken "before" shots of. I fell in love with this piece at an estate sale. After paying for it, I realized the sides were completely warped from some sort of water damage. When I pointed it out to the seller, she said she hung a long doily over the top so that the sides were covered and you did not notice the damage. Not the look I was going for, I went home and brainstormed. What gave the dresser a neat shape were the way that the sides were partially recessed - basically each side was made of a thick frame, with a panel placed into groves of this frame. The "panels" were very thin pieces of wood, which is why they warped so easily when exposed to water. The panels had to be replaced.

Not being a woodworker, I used my creativity and took the back off the chest to gain easy access to the damaged wood. I then knocked out the damaged part with a hammer. I had some high-quality bead board sitting in my basement (don't ask). There was no way I could ever get replacement panels to fit exactly into those grooves, so I did not need to be exact in cutting the bead board for the replacement sides, which was a good thing since this was before I invested in a jigsaw. After managing to not cut off my fingers with the chainsaw (yes, really), I had two similar pieces of board that I mounted on the interior of the dresser. These new panels were an excellent fit, and to make them look like they were original, I filled in all crevices with high-quality caulk and putty. Really, you would have never known they were not part of the original design unless you took the whole thing apart.

This piece was small enough that I assumed it would go in a little girl's room or cutesy guest room, so I painted it off-white. But I cannot resist glazing bead board, so I ended up going with a dark brown glaze on top of the paint. I was dismayed that this piece sat for months on consignment. I get sentimentally attached to pieces, especially the ones I have to get creative with, and when they don't sell immediately, I get really sad. Silly, I know. I had a few pieces that had been sitting in consignment for months that I was going to repaint black, this being one of them. A salesperson at the consignment shop stopped me on this one saying it was too neat to be painted any other way and to be patient, it would sell. And it finally did last week.

Mirror & Dresser, Black distressed

I found a 4-piece set of furniture that consisted of a headboard, large dresser, side table, and mirror. This is the job where I learned not all furniture and paints are alike. For some reason I could not get the paint to adhere to this furniture. Even when I primed it with the 1-2-3 "it will stick to anything" primer, I still had problems with the paint peeling off. I literally painted these pieces 3 times. It was a good, but frustrating lesson. Expensive, quality paint is always worth it in the end.

UGA Themed Headboards

At one point the boys had matching headboards that got a little beat up. I remember someone telling me college-themed furniture sold well, so I painted these in red and black in honor of UGA (not my alma mater, but light blue and white would look silly).

Very Cool Find, Antique Cabinet

This is one of my great success stories, finding something for less than $10, and then selling it for over $150. Keep in mind this required a TON of work on my part as this there was a reason this vintage piece was priced so low. A whole chunk was missing from the top of one of the drawers and one of the interior shelves had been busted out.

Fixing the interior shelf was easy, I just needed a piece of wood similar in thickness to the shelf on the opposite side (thanks to a neighbor who let me dumpster dive multiple times while putting an addition onto her house), a tape measure, a jigsaw, and a sander. Once the proper piece was cut, nailing it in an covering the holes was easy.

The busted drawer was a whole other issue. I took the whole thing apart, and flipped the drawer face over, drilled new holes for the pulls, and put the drawer back together so that the busted part was now on the bottom. I thought if I distressed the whole piece, it would not matter that there was a little damage on the bottom of the bottom drawer; it would give it character. Turns out the damage was worse than I thought and was very obvious, even on the bottom side of the bottom drawer. After much brainstorming and a few trips to the hardware store, I finally figured out how to repair the drawer with a thin piece of wood that matched the size of the drawer front, attaching it with brackets on the back, and filling in all cracks. Once painted, you could not tell the drawer had ever been damaged. I had to reassemble the drawer again to make close properly, but the end result was a really cool piece.

I kept the original pulls in the original color since I thought they gave it a unique, vintage feel.