Trash to Treasure

I've joined the junking world. We've been living in our apartment for 1 year now and for the first 9 months here, I did little to no decorating. I wasn't feeling the place and didn't care to decorate a place I didn't like, but then a few months back I became obsessed with decorating. It started in November, I wanted to decorate, but I didn't want to spend a lot, and I wanted to do it my own way. So I was on the lookout at thrift stores. I began finding things that would work in my place, but they just needed some TLC. Since then, our place looks a lot more cozy and personalized.

I love fun finds and I love the idea of finding something someone else didn't want anymore and breathing new life into it and making it beautiful and lovely and work just right for your own environment.

There was a piece of furniture that we purchased probably 5 years ago in Las Vegas, at the Goodwill (where we purchased most of our stuff when we were first married), that in the back of my mind I thought would be a good candidate for a makeover.

I probably thought that this would be a good piece to experiment on and reupholster, seeing as I only spent $7 for it! Yes, $7. It was ugly but, I just had to buy it for that price. I will tell you now, that this piece still looks the same as it did almost 6 years ago. It still sits in this ugly condition, tucked away so no one can see it;) I've not yet built up the courage to tackle this beast. I thought that perhaps I should start small.

Let me show you some of the small projects I've been working on for the last several months.

I had been wanting to display pictures on shelves in our living room but I didn't have any shelves. So I bought some at IKEA, but I never put them up because I just didn't really love them. They were kind of just cheap looking and blah. So I decided that we would try to make our own shelves. We bought some wood at Home Depot and had them cut it in half so we could make 2 shelves, 4 ft. each. Then Skyler drilled the long skinny piece of wood on the tip so pictures would be secure and then drilled the brackets onto the shelf. The black brackets were also from Home Depot. They were in the corner of the store and very dusty. (Probably because they were a little overpriced. But we had a fussy baby and just wanted to get on with it so we bought them.) Later, I stained the shelves with Jacobean, a Minwax stain and I just love how it turned out. The stain is very antiquey and I just love the color. It has a very warm, reclaimed wood look.

 Our shelves at Christmas time

and now

 I love how they turned out. I even like the brackets;) The shelves are on either side of the wroght iron wall art in our living room and they hold lots of pictures of our family. I love them!

One of my first finds was a very ugly small wooden bench of some kind. It had an ugly basketball on each side of the bench and a bunch of paint scratches. I got the bench for $6.

 Ugly!

I took it outside and sanded it. And this was all with a little sand block. Uhm, it was not fun and took forever to sand. This began my loathsome and disdain towards sanding. But you must sand (to get rid of ugly basketballs and) before you can do the awesomeness staining. That was the part that made the grueling task of sanding worth it; seeing the wood turn into something beautiful.

Ta-duh!

I used the same stain from the shelves (because A- it would save money, and B- I love the color so why not). I love how it turned out. Now, had I a better sander, I would have sanded it even more and it may have turned out darker, but I am happy with it. Only thing I failed to do was protect it with poly-urethane (because I was cheap). I brought it inside and used it as a shoe bench in our entryway. The snowy shoes have dulled the look on top some. So come spring I may fix it up some and protect it. 

I ♥ my shoe bench.

I have many other projects to share with you, but i will share those later.
I'd love to create a blog to share my furniture face lifts, but I'm not sure about that one yet!