My first refinishing project

Hello everyone! It has been a long time since I posted...but that doesn't mean I haven't been crafting away. Well, at least for the past couple months. Goodness, it's crazy how many projects I've completed recently.

At the beginning of November I posted over on my personal blog about how I was starting this project. I finished it in just a couple days but have never shared it. So here goes.

I have a little corner in my basement apartment that needed some kind of shelf or tall desk. I needed some extra storage space for books and papers and something cute and decorative. I looked around for a couple weeks exploring some specific ideas, but when I found this piece at D.I. for cheap, I knew it would work.

The BEFORE shot (I had already taken off the first door before I remembered to take a pic.)

As you can see, the first step I took was removing the doors and hardware. After that, I sanded down everything. Since this was already in my house, I placed some old sheets on the carpet and did everything on that so there was easy clean up. 

When I was ready to paint, I first covered all the corners and edges with some deep red acrylic paint, just in case I wanted to distress it and have that color pop through.

Then I went about painting everything. My lovely sis (Sizzle!), informed me about purchasing that small jar of sample paint (see pic above) from the hardware store for $2-3. I even have a bit of the paint left over. Yes I did all the painting inside, on the above blue sheet. I would do one portion, allow it to dry, rotate the piece, and paint another section. 

And.... 

The end product (plus a little bit of Christmas decoration)

I initially planned on putting the lower doors back on, but the screws were stripped and I could never get those handles off. So Plan B, I made little curtains that could hide my storage space.  Ta-da!

That black and white pinstripe fabric matches some of my other projects: full-sized curtains, desk chair, recovering, and decorative pillows. I got a bunch of the fabric at Savers for just a couple dollars and believe me, I've made good use of it. I'll try to share those other projects soon! 

I LOVED doing this! It was cheap and super easy. Next I'm on the hunt for a good coffee table. Then I want to try refinishing some laminate pieces.