I was determined to turn it into a presentable desk for my office that also doubles as a guest room. It started out as a kitchen table in the early days of marriage when pine was all we poor struggling kids could afford. More recently, it was used as a craft table by my children. It was covered with remnants of glue, glitter and crayon. One leg was covered in a thick brown substance that I sincerely hope was finger paint. After a very thorough cleaning, it was time to sand, prime, paint and possibly, add a finishing touch.

Step one was sanding. Years of use left the surface of the table, soon-to-be desk pretty scratched up. Pine is a very soft wood. It took a bit of time to remove the finish and sand down the years of abuse. After a good wiping down, it was on to primer and paint. I may sound like a broken record here, but I grabbed my trusted friends, Rustoleum spray primer and paint in White Satin and had at it. A few thin coats of each was all it took. Remember, when you are using spray paint, it is always best to do multiple thin coats to avoid drips. I followed the directions on the can and waited about 20 after priming to paint the desk. I let the desk dry for 24 hours then applied a wipe on protective coat. It now looked like this: Better, but not quite there. It needed a dash of something to punch it up a bit. How about painting a pinstripe border? I liked the idea of it, but I’m all about effortless design and the thought of measuring, taping and painting sounded like a lot of trouble. If I didn’t like it, I would have to paint again. Enter liquid starch. This fabulous product and a couple of rolls of .50 ribbon from Michael’s could give me the look of a painted pinstripe in minutes. Here’s the skinny: Step 1 – With a ruler placed at the edge of the table, parallel to the top, I marked the distance I wanted between each of my stripes. I moved the ruler down several inches and again marked the same distances. I continued this process in about 4 inch increments until I was at the opposite end of the table. I repeated the process on the other side of the desk. I chose two thin stripes on either side of a slightly thicker stripe to give me the look I was going for. Step 2- I measured the length I wanted each stripe be, including how much would be necessary to wrap around the edge of the desk. I cut four lengths of orange ribbon for the outer stripes and two lengths of red ribbon for the inner stripe. Step 3 – I poured a small amount of liquid starch in
to a plastic container and placed a piece of ribbon in the liquid. I made sure to saturate the ribbon, then, with my thumb and index finger, I squeezed out the excess starch, working my way to the end of the ribbon. Step 4- Using the pencil marks as my guide and starting with the innermost stripes and working my way to the edge, I positioned the ribbons on the desk, tucking the ends under for a finished look. This step is very similar to using wallpaper. The liquid starch is very slippery allowing you to reposition if necessary. Step 5 – I let the ribbon dry overnight and I was ready to place my accessories on the desk and call it a day. From start to finish, this took about 15-20 minutes to complete. The best part about this method is that the ribbon will adhere to the desk until I decide to remove it. But it gets better, unlike wallpaper, an absolute nightmare to remove, the ribbon will peel off in one pull. No mess!

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Kristin:
I started this project back in March, but wedding planning and school and possibly sheer laziness may or may not have gotten in the way! So now, 5 months later, I’ve finished it and fallen in love!!

This was my aunts and was apparently “so in” back in the day. I’ve always loved it, even though it had an unfortunate color!yuck yuck yuck!

a gross streaky mess

I had my dad help me haul it down to his shop where I sanded it all down. I didn’t think about it until I was completely done sanding that it was probably lead based paint and I’d just inhaled it all! Oh well, my lungs haven’t died yet! 🙂

It took four coats of white paint before it was looking good enough to be done!

This is only the first coat

I then added hardware that I got at lowes for 2.00 each. Simple plain white and silver knobs. I did away with the original pulls and just put knobs on. I like that look much better. The original holes were filled in with filler before I even sanded.
I ordered some awesome lime green blooms from etsy seller byrdiegraphics. (who by the way, was really awesome to work with. Plus when i got my package she had sent me 2 free birds!) They were the most expensive part at 38.00 but I have already learned that I suck at stenciling so I was NOT about to try that again. Go ahead and say I cheated but I don’t care!

I forgot to take pictures in the process of applying the decals so instead you just get a bunch of pictures with it finished!!!

oh and thats not an abercrombie photo…that’s my husband!

So here you go…

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It’s found a home in my new craft room.
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Amanda at Vintage Dutch Girl:

I’ve been feeling super inspired by all the thrifty crafty DIY and fabulous revamp blogs I’ve been reading. So I gathered up my spending cash (less than $20.00 – whoopadeedoo….can you buy ANYTHING anymore for less than twenty bucks?), pawned the kids off on my dear hubby, jumped in the car and headed to our local Goodwill store for some thrifting therapy. I eagerly browsed around looking for something horrible and decrepit with a splash of potential. There was one fabulous chair that I passed up because it was too expensive. Y’all – Here I am, IN A GOODWILL STORE, turning my nose at a perfect revamp project because Mrs. Stinginess did not want to shell out $14.99! Ha! Told ya I was thrifty…or dutch, but whatever.However, I’m glad I passed up the aforementioned overpriced chair because tucked in the back high up on a shelf I spotted this sad, forlorn and forgotten chair:

Goodness gracious, HELLO POTENTIAL!

I was muchly thrilled. And even better? The stingy dutch woman living inside of me (Hi, Mrs. Stinginess, I know you are in there) was pleased as punch to see a price tag of $3.99.

YOU BETCHA!

I picked this sucker up for less than a Starbucks Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte!

Can ya tell I was slightly ecstatic? I wheeled my chair-laden goodwill cart proudly, wondering if the other
patrons were kicking themselves for passing up my treasure.

The seat fabric? Detestable. Fuzzy orange with shiny gold stripes:

Blech!

I unloaded that thing into my garage and took Bessie to it:

Yeah, I named my cowtastic screwdriver Bessie.

Yanked that seat off, threw the fabric DIRECTLY into the garbage, then sanded, primed and spray painted that chair to gorgeousness:

I added a bunch of batting layers to the squashed seat pad:

Stapled on some fantastic new fabric (that cost more than the chair), Bessie reattached the seat and voila!

Meet Mrs. Previously Goodwill Drab, now known as Miss Sassy N. FAB:

LOVE the lines of Lil Miss Sassy…properly distressed, of course.

I have a slight obsession with green. I actually gasped OUT LOUD in the fabric store when I saw this bit o green gloriousness.

Before and after shot, from DRAB to FAB! :

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Nori at Love-2-Create:

Read the story behind this here.

I’m still trying to find my style, but I tend to go for the more modern, clean lines. This piece had a bit of a country feel to me, so I wanted to make a few changes to give it a more modern feel. First, I gave it a light sand and primed it. I like to start working on most of my pieces from the bottom up so I make sure that I don’t miss anything and also so I don’t kill my back.

On the first coat, I used two 98 cents cans of paint that I already had on hand to save money. After letting it dry, I went over everything with Rustoleum’s black satin semi-gloss to give it that pretty shine.

I wasn’t really concerned about getting full coverage on the panels because I had other plans for that area. As you can see, I had a hard time getting to the bottom rungs of the piece. No worries though. I knew that I wanted to store things underneath, so I had other plans for that area too.

I measured out all the recessed paneled areas and cut out my recent wrapping paper find to fit. I glued the paper using Zips.

I planned on using Modge Podge, but just in case down the road I want to change it out, I don’t want to have to deal with ripping it all off. Zips is a lot like a hot glue gun without dealing with the long spider webby strands that occur when you pull the gun away and hardened glue that sometimes shows through. It sticks REALLY well.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the rest of my transformation process from a complete novice at sewing (so please forgive me if I don’t use the correct terms):

Cut 4 panels of fabric.

Sew together with right sides facing each other.

Iron the hem- it’s helps keep a straight edge while sewing.

Press the parts that you sewed together- it will give it a crisp look.

Sew! It helps it “flow” if you arrange it in a nice neat pile in your lap.

I made sure to keep my fabric in line with the line at 10 so that I would have a straight hem.

I learned how to make this ruffle from Britt over at A Penny Saved. See her post for great instructions. I’m all about eyeing things and not having to deal with the stress of measuring.

Measure out double the length of the sides and pin.

Pull and find the midpoint and pin and repeat.

Then fold over and pin to create your ruffles.

I forgot to take a picture, but next I pressed the ruffles and then did a zig-zag stitch on the top of the whole thing to keep it in place.

Next I stapled it up on my piece.

Once the fabric was secured, I used this glue to adhere my ribbon border.

I used this glue because I wanted my ribbon to lay flat on the fabric. See how pretty??

Here’s a reminder of the BEFORE:

And here is the AFTER!

I need to finish decorating the top, but here’s an idea of what it looks like with the area surrounding it:

A breakdown of costs:
Furniture Free

Paint $5.75
Ribbon $1.95
Wrapping paper $2.25
Fabric $4.20
Total: $14.15

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Danielle at Craft Rookie:

As promised, here is the before and after post about our entertainment center. 🙂 It took us pretty much all day (on and off) last Saturday to get this done….but by the end of the day, we brought it inside.

First, here’s a little background on this great piece of furniture. 🙂 We ran across it one day last summer right before we got married. It was sitting in someone’s front yard with a “Free” sign. Well, we needed an entertainment center, and we didn’t have a lot of money to spare, so Free sounded good to us! So my father-in-law hauled it off for us, and it resided in our apartment for the past year. When we decided to move, we realized it was too tall for the space we wanted to put it (against the staircase), so we took the top off. Before we did that, it looked kind of like this:
But we just needed the bottom half, so we pried off the top half….so it looked like this:
Obviously, because we ripped off the top, we had some holes where the nails had been….so we starte
d by filling in those holes with wood filler:
And we knocked some of the nails that were still poking up a little bit down further with a hammer.
Then we got out our make-over supplies. We used paint brushes, foam brushes, latex gloves, and primer.
And our free quart of Glidden paint! Oh yeah!
Next we coated it in primer (except for the fronts of the doors, since we planned to mod-podge those)….
Then, after the wood filler had dried, we sanded it down so it was flat, and painted primer over it, too.

My free Glidden paint choice was called, “Red Delicious.” When I saw it online, it seemed to be a nice bright red, but when we started painting, it looked hot pink! We were slightly concerned. 🙂 It was probably due to the white primer underneath, because as we added coats, it turned more red.
After finishing all the coats of paint, we mod-podged patterned 12×12 inch scrapbook paper onto it. It was really time-consuming getting it cut to the perfect size to fit in the holes (especially since each hole was a little different…hmmm… :)) But eventually we got them all in:


Here’s a look at the mod-podged paper up-close:

Then we hauled it inside:
And we left it to dry for a couple of days, then put the hardware (handles) back on:After a couple of days, we did a coat of Shellac over it to help keep it from getting dented and scratched as easily. Then, we put the TV back on, and VOILA!

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Visit the links to see the blogs of each of these talented ladies!
Aren’t they so “happily ever after”?

Great job everyone! I am SO inspired!
I really need to find a piece of furniture worth rescuing!

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This post is brought to you by Spacecraft, currently stocking a beautiful range of bertoia chairs.