When I first moved out of my giant 5 person college house into my tiny 1 bedroom apartment, I came to the realization that I actually didn’t own any furniture. Everything in our house at college was my housemates. Most of my existing furniture was old hand-me-downs; my sister gave me her old coffee table, my parents upgraded their couch and gave me theirs, my dresser came from my grandparents house. Since I had such a mish-mosh of old furniture that I really liked, I didn’t want to go out and spend a bunch of money on furniture that I would have to try and match to my existing pieces. Since it was September when I first moved in, I frequented garage sales and kept my eyes open for curbside finds.
My two “thriftiest” pieces were a plant stand/small end table I found at a local Salvation Army for a few bucks while dropping off some old clothing, and a nightstand that my older sister gave me when she moved. Both pieces were in pretty rough shape, but I liked their shape so I decided to give them an upgrade. The night stand had a chipped off high-gloss black paint, and the end table was white with hand painted christmas trees on it. I took a sunny day and decided to make these babies like new.
The first thing I did was make a stop at Lowes. I picked up a plastic drop cloth, a cheap paint brush, a bottle of spray primer like this, and a quart of paint like this. I picked out a vibrant raspberry color since my living room was mostly muted colors I wanted to make them “pop”. So I went home and set up camp in an empty parking space in my apartment complex parking lot and got to work. I sprayed both pieces down with the primer twice and let them dry for an hour or two. Then I painted both tables with about 3 or 4 coats of paint before I got the deep color I was looking for and I could hide the nicks and imperfections.
When I was just about done, one of the ladies from the “holistic healing” center next to my apartment came up to me and was complimenting my work. At that point I really wondered why the hell did I paint these things bright magenta. But once I brought them upstairs and saw them next to my deep green couch, I loved the way they came out!
Overall, I probably spent about $20 and a Saturday afternoon on the whole project. The best part about revamping old furniture like this is that I know that I can always paint over it with a neutral color if I get sick of it, and if I find something that I like better, or just want to get rid of them and upgrade when I move, I won’t feel like I am throwing away money.
Have you worked on any thrifty DIY projects lately?
Yours Truly- M
daytodaywithmanda.wordpress.com 
I love the way those turned out!! The color is awesome and the pieces have character that you might not have gotten from store bought items! I’m a huge fan of using chalk paint to make furniture look new, but I’m definitely going to try and use the spray primer you used on my next project!
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Thank you Ashley! I have never used chalk paint before but I hear it is super easy to work with. The spray primer was so easy I am never buying the brush-on stuff again! 🙂
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Very clever! And very nice work!
I did something similar with 2 old chairs I got at a thrift shop. The old colour was really not my style at all, but like you I could see the potential these chairs offered with some TLC.
So I stripped off the paint, repainted the chairs a light greyish blue and then distressed the chairs with some carefully applied black and white paint. They now fit perfectly in my home which I describe as “French Country Cottage”
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Great idea!
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I love DIY. I haven’t done a project in quite a while and I’m dying to try out my new detail sander. My last project was an old nightstand I found on the side of the road, missing drawers and peeling bright purple paint. But the bones were good, so I threw it in the back of my car and took it home. I scraped off the paint to find a beechwood nightstand. No drawers, so we removed the drawer bases, sanded it, washed it down with Murphy’s Oil Soap and put a walnut stain on it. Turned out great and I use it as my printer stand with three shelves for paper and reference book storage.
Your project gorgeous, love that color. And the pieces have good bones, which is probably why they turned out so nice. It’s fun taking something that somebody else thinks is junk and turning it into a statement piece, eh?
Annie
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Yes! That is the best part 🙂
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