im2smrt4u and I were given a bunch of hand-me-down pre-used furniture when we moved into our apartment. One of the items was a awful looking dinning room table set that I quickly painted midnight black and reupholstered the seats with some awesome funky fabric I found at Ikea. I sadly do not have before pictures of this. I have also painted a dresser/bookshelf combo for our room with this same color. Both pieces came out really nice.
With an impending move to our own place coming up, smrt seemed somewhat down about taking our "old" furniture to a new "swanky" apartment (we live in So Cal, lots of new apartment complexes). We, of course can't afford to buy new furniture to replace some of our uglier pieces. This got me thinking about what other pieces needed some updating.
One is an end table that looked like it had been mistreated. Lots of water marks, chunks of the finish missing, scratched everywhere, and even the glass top is scratched. And quite honestly, I think the previous stain on it is not my favorite. I covered it in a few coats of this midnight black paint and two coats of a clear protective coat.
Before:
Two coats of black paint:
The finished product:
I am pretty pleased with how this came out, as well as the other pieces I have done previously. I'll try to take some pictures of them later.
In these hard economic times, when people can not afford to buy new furniture or spend big buck on renovation, I think sprucing up small pieces can go a long way in making ones living environment fell better.
What are some ideas that others have had or done to make things nicer with out spending a ton of money? I know people like snowy have done some renovations lately, what about everyone else? Does any one have pictures or stories? Does this inspire you to fix or do some "sprucing" of your own?