More Furniture Projects

Just finished up the last of my winter furniture projects!  Wahoo!  There are still a few items for next year in storage that I need to refurbish, but I'm planning on saving those for next winter.  Here are some before and after photos of the ones that I have just finished up:

This is a dresser that I picked up at the local Salvation Army.  I paid $35 bucks for this beauty, but it had a lot of issues and desperately needed some TLC.  One of the casters on the bottom was broken off completely, so when Craig and I picked it up to move it, the leg would fall off.  The second drawer had a big gash in the outside veneer that I had to patch up, and the bottom antique handle had been loose for some time and scratched the drawer up badly.  The handle itself was bent up and thrown into the inside of the bottom drawer. 

And this is how it looked after I refurbished it, sitting in my parents new house.  I remade this dresser for my mom, who likes the lighter colored wood.  I sanded the veneer down to bring out the lighter honey colored poplar underneath.  I also added some nice wheat themed wood appliques to give it more appeal.   One of the fun things that I love to do is to create contrasting stain colors on furniture.  I adore the light/dark scheme!  My first piece of furniture that I did this way was our bathroom medicine cabinet, and I've been hooked on doing the light and dark thing ever since. 

Oh boy, this poor little thing....  This is another Salvation Army find, and I think I paid $10 bucks for it.  This sad little dresser was in absolutely horrendous shape, (broken floorboards on the drawer bottoms, thick brown house paint slopped all over it with a roller and drippy paint runs everywhere, numerous deep gouges in the wood, missing and mismatched handles, etc.) 
But, I did have a good vision for it....

 

This is how it looked after I got done with it, (please excuse my father's clothing and various items piled on top of it.)  My dad needed a dresser, and I know how much he really likes barn wood.  I had a lot of fun hunting the countryside for wood, and I managed to pick up some old farm house siding and different barn boards from local sites.  I took the drawer fronts off and created completely new ones out of barn wood, and also added some lower legs to set it up off of the ground.  Then I constructed an upper frame and added two top shelves for more storage space.  I replaced the broken floor boards on the inside of the drawers and added some old reproduction 1800's newspaper lining to the bottoms for a more unique look.  To top it off I found some old flour bin handles for drawer pulls.  It's very different from what it started out as, and my dad seems to really love it!     

  

Craig and I had this little nightmare of a nightstand sitting in our storage.  I remember when we first met neither one of us had very good furniture - in fact, most of it was totally crappy.  This little pine dresser was in the house when I first moved in, and it was a hideous little thing with a dark burgundy red stain and scratches all over it.  There was some caked-on old orange paint that had been spilled all over the inside of the drawer too. 

And this is what the nightstand looked like after I refurbished it.  I remade it to match my mom's dresser.  I was able to find some inexpensive wooden spiral twist legs and some antique piano stool claw feet on E-Bay.  After completely sanding the legs down and lathing the bottoms of them to make the feet fit, Craig helped me cut the bottom shelf and move it up to make a cute little cubby hole.  It has a whole new look!

I also attempted something on this that I've never done on a piece of furniture before.  I added a rich blue crushed velvet lining for the entire inside of the drawer.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It makes this simple little nightstand look more like a higher end piece of furniture.  (And, the liner wasn't as hard to do as I thought that it would be, so I'm looking forward to doing more of it in the future.) 

And lastly, this project was part of my husbands Christmas present.  He absolutely HAD TO HAVE a new TV....  (really, it was like life or death that he got a new one.... I never heard the end of it until it was purchased...)  So, after getting the TV, we had to make a table for it.  This is a 5' foot table that we created out of barn wood.  Now Craig's "gigantor" colossal tube has something to sit upon.  Good grief, it's like having a kraken in our living room..... *sigh*