Dining Room Buffet

This is a piece I bought a few months before we moved into this house.  So I purchased this bad boy 3 years ago with every intention of refurbishing it 3 years ago.  Then life happened.

BEFORE

AFTER

 Since this is in my dining room I decided to make it match the table I just finished. 

I painted and glazed the bottom and sanded and stained the top.

Debbie and Pam took me to Anthropology right after my birthday and gave me a gift certificate.  Between their sweet gift and my Aunt Diane sending me money for my birthday, I was able to score these beautiful knobs and drawer pulls!

I'll post picks of my "new" dining room soon!

Refurbished Table and Chairs

After my latest paint projects I decided to tackle my dining room table.  The table and chairs were given to us when we got married, so they were starting to look a little dated.

BEFORE

 The chairs were a pale green with embroidered stars on them when we were given the table.  I had the chairs reupholstered about a year after we got the table.

 I tackled the table first.

 I painted and glazed the legs.

And I sanded and stained the top.

 This is darker than I had envisioned, but I actually really like it.

DONE...with the table.  Now for the chairs.

 The chairs were very time consuming.  But I think the paint and glaze make the details stand out.

ALL DONE!!

Next I tackled the buffet.  I'll post about that next.

Adding Some Color

The cabinet I painted and glazed was actually not the piece I intended to do first.  That just happened.  I figured as long as I was getting out all of the painting, sanding, and priming stuff I might as well make it worth my time.  The two pieces I wanted to start with were the coffee table and side table from our family room.

This is the only 'before' picture I have.  See that black coffee table?  And the corner of that side table...the one the lamp is sitting on?  Those were my projects.  I bought these two pieces at Target shortly after Hans and I got married.  They were just supposed to be filler pieces that would hold us over until we found, and had money, for what we really wanted.  I never though they would last this long.  But these cheap particle board pieces have managed to survive 4 moves, 3 kids, 1 dog, and Hans.  So I thought I'd give them a little facelift.

 Primed and ready to go.  I had just gotten done spraying these Peacock Feather blue and a storm blue in.  I'm sure all of my neighbors got a big laugh watching me try to get these into my garage without doing too much damage to the paint job.  Despite the drop cloth I also managed to paint part of my driveway.  

I learned some valuable lessons that day.  1. Always check the weather.  2. If your grassy area is too uneven to paint your furniture on, be sure to pre-schedule someone to come out and reseal your driveway.

 This is Peacock Feather blue.  I almost didn't glaze these pieces as I love this color.  But I'm not sure this would have worked as well in my house.

 After glazing.

Now my family room looks like this.  

Well, almost like this.  Throw in an outrageous number of mismatched shoes, dirty clothes, and 6 pounds of dog hair and that is what my family room looks like.

My Refurbished Cabinet

After re-working my dining room, I had an extra piece of furniture I didn't know what to do with.  I figured this would be a great piece to experiment on with painting and glazing.

I bought this piece off of Craigslist 2 1/2 years ago.  I figured some day I would re-do it.  I never thought it would take me this long.  Nevertheless, here it sits in what I hoped would be its new spot in the formal living room.

 After de-glossing it I primed it.

Then I decided to make use of my paint sprayer.  I found out this is not my favorite method of painting.  And, unless I did something really wrong it also isn't the most economical option.   I have to say I HATED the piece after this.  I called Hans and told him I thought it looked horrible.  How could I have been so wrong about the color?  But, I figured I would try glazing the piece before giving up completely.

 I'm glad I glazed before calling it a loss.  The glazing did wonders. 

 I thought something different for the bottom of the drawers would be fun.  I thought about wallpaper, but the quickest, cheapest and best option was actually wrapping paper.  I glued the paper to the bottom of the drawer and then put two coats of Polyurethane over the top.

Here it is all done and in its final home.  I purchased new knobs and drawer pulls.  I intended to buy new hinges, but after going to 3 stores and trying every hinge I saw I realized that wasn't going to be possible.  So I ended up just spraying the hinges to match the other hardware.

I was so pleased with this that I decided to do two other pieces.  Pictures will be posted shortly.

***After doing this piece I discovered that I glazed it all wrong.  The glaze should be more blended and less streaky.  Now I want to re-do it, but I fear my husband would wring my neck.  (Editor's note: I would never do such a thing and think it looks awesome and that my lovely wife needs to stop being so ridiculously self-critical.) Live and learn I guess.***