$3 Furniture Makeover

Austin and I moved into our home about three months ago from a tiny two bedroom townhouse.  The new house is much larger, 3 bedroom, and is on 4 acres of land.  We love the house and the location.  However, there are a few issues with it.  

A. This house is outdated.  It is 40 years old and I am not sure it has been updated in 40 years.  I'm talking this weird golden brown trim, ugly cream/almost yellow walls, really ugly carpet, brown beat up cabinets.. you get the point.  It is rough.  But the house itself has so much potential!

B.  We don't know what we want to have for dinner, much less where we see ourselves in 5 years.  Therefore, we are scared to buy a house until we know where we want to settle down.  SO, we are renting this home.  That being said, I don't want to put a lot into this house because.. well, its not mine.  So, we are trying to avoid painting walls and all that good stuff.  Trust me, though, it is everything in me not to rip these carpets out with my bare hands.

C.  We came from a tiny townhouse into a home well over twice its size.  We do not have a lot of furniture and the furniture we do have does not fill the wall space of this house.  But why buy all new furniture for a house that you don't know you are going to live in even next year?

All this to say, while the house has potential, it is a little rough right now.  We kind of just threw furniture in here when we moved in and nothing really makes sense.  And it is starting to drive me absolutely crazy.  I have to make some sense out of this home.

So, many of my blogs will be about the little home makeovers that I will be doing around here.  Like I said, I do not want to spend a ton of money on this house seeing as I do not own it.  Many of my blogs will be DIYs and things of that sort for the house.  

That was a ridiculously long introduction for this, but here we go.

$3 Furniture Makeover!

I have recently seen a ton of people refurbishing old furniture to make it new again.  I really loved the look that everyone was getting, so I decided to give it a try.  I am not an artist at all.  I actually am horrible at art.  So I was nervous.  But I actually have grown to be obsessed with this and I think my whole house is going to be furnished by the end of the weekend if I keep this up.

So, first step is finding the furniture you want to paint.  Austin and I went thrifting and antiquing one day when we came across this thrift store with some pretty beat up furniture in the back.  Back as in behind the store.. it was basically a junk yard.  But everything back there was less than $5! 

So I found two pieces that I thought could have potential.  They were rough, but I tried to see past the spiderwebs and broken pieces.

This black thing had a door on the front of it, but when I touched it it fell apart.  It was extremely beat up and looked like it came from the bottom of a dumpster.. but I felt like it had potential.  Not a lot, and it was hard to see.. but I felt like the potential was there.  Plus it was $2.98... I mean, what do I have to lose?

Then I saw this little guy.  It is actually a hutch for a desk, but I immediately saw a bench.  I have been wanting a bench of some sort to put in my kitchen, so I was pretty stoked to hear that this was also only $2.98.  Again, what is to lose at that point?

So after squeezing me, Austin, Stella, and both of these pieces of furniture into my 4Runner, I hurried home to get started.  

At one of the antique stores I had visited that day, they were selling chalk paint.  I had been searching for Annie Sloan chalk paint in Memphis, but I was having trouble finding any retailers.  I did not want to order any online because, well, I was ready to start on this project today.  So I got some of the chalk paint from the antique store.. $12 for a tiny container.  But I was okay with that and I figured two of those containers would be plenty for the black thing.  We can worry about the bench later.

The great thing about chalk paint is that it actually has a chemical in it that does not require you to strip, sand, or prime anything before using it.  Chalk paint is made to go directly onto any surface.  This is my kind of painting.

So I went for it and I painted the black thing a limeish green/blue and white. 

Then, this morning, I went to the Memphis Flea Market and found a guy selling rugs for $5 a piece.  I bought five.  With no idea of where I was going to put them.. but it was another "what do I have to lose" type thing.

So, I put my little new painted chest/bookcase at the end of my hallway over one of my new $5 rugs. 

I am pretty excited by the way it turned out!

Now to the hutch turned bench.  

I went to Home Depot to grab some of their chalk paint for the bench.  It was only $8 for the tiny container compared to $12 at the antique store.

When I was there, I got to talking to this woman about what I was working on.. explaining to her that I am new to this.  She told me that flat paint is ultimately the same thing as chalk paint and much less expensive.  She showed me Klean- Strip Easy Liquid Sander Deglosser and said that if I put that on any surface, I could paint right over it with a flat paint and it would be the same as chalk paint.  DONE.

I got that plus she mixed me two colors of a flat paint and put them in the same size tiny sample container as the chalk paint.. but these were only $2.  And you have a much larger color selection.  Perfect.

It turned out pretty nice.  I was fairly happy with the liquid sander deglosser.  I'm not convinced that a spray primer wouldn't have ultimately done the same thing, but that is okay.

I love the way it turned out.  I used two shades of green, however one is so light that it is basically white.  It just has the tiniest tint of green in it.  I love it.  I put it in the kitchen over another one of my $5 rugs. I am pretty much obsessed.

I have five more pieces of furniture in my garage just waiting for me to paint.  So, I'll be updating this as I go along.  

For $6, I'd say I did pretty good on these two pieces!