All posts tagged: Painted furniture

Before & after: cabinet

Published by

While at my favourite second-hand shop looking for other goodies, I stumbled across this cabinet. Even though it wasn’t the most striking piece of furniture I walked back for a second, third and fourth look. I wasn’t sure at first that I could do anything with it – the bottom half was tired and ugly, but I couldn’t stop staring at the top half. That beautiful big glass door, I had lots of images in my head of how I could bring it to life! My lovely Dad confirmed that he could help me (aka do 90% of the hard labour while I supervised) saw the base of it off and that it wouldn’t be too difficult, so I was sold (for $20 too!). Squished it in the back of the car and set off home, very chuffed with my not-so-little find. After sawing off the bottom half and attached new legs that I bought from Bunnings, I sanded the cabinet back and gave it a good clean. The previous owners didn’t treat it that …

Before & after: gumball terrarium

Published by

This is probably one of the most favourite things I’ve ever made. I had a lot of fun! I bought the bubblegum machine in its original, tired form from a friend. I then sanded it back, gave it an undercoat and then a couple of coats of this glorious glossy blue. I then cut a piece of perspex to size (Ikea frames! They all have flexible plastic rather than glass – perfect!) to sit inside the base of the gumball machine and sealed it up to make sure that it was watertight. After that I built a simple moss terrarium inside and added a cutesy bunny and then I was finished :) It was really hard to part with this but it went to a great home and I’m happy that others loved it as much as I did too.

Before & after; cane tray

Published by

I’m not entirely sure what I was ever intending to use this for. For $2 I wasn’t ready to pass it up and I was sure I’d figure out something I could do with it! I had a can of black spray pain laying around, as well as a giant piece of cardboard, so I decided to cut a piece to size for the bottom of the tray and cover with a great piece of fabric. Love the colours! Makes a great table centrepiece. And because I didn’t actually fix the base down in any permanent way, I could easily swap it out for another piece of fabric if I want a change. Perfect!

Before & after; mini greenhouse

Published by

I spent a good hour in a second hand shop finding the right sized frames – and I aaaallllmossttt got there. They didn’t all measure up exactly and if they did it would probably have ended up looking more ‘finished’, but I kind of like that it has that used/distressed/scrappy look. Seeing as it is actually all of those things! This was also an interesting experiment for me in doing some basic handyman work – nailing things and such. I think I need to do a basic tools course (do they have those?) as I was pretty useless at that part and it took me way longer than it would have taken a partially skilled human. At one point I accidentally nailed the thing to the floor of my loungeroom…. oops! Before After

Before & after: desk

Published by

I pictured up this beautiful desk for $50 from a second hand shop, it was love at first sight! I had just moved into my new apartment in a new city. Most of my furniture from the previous city hadn’t arrived yet so and I had a few days to myself before I started my new job, so it was time for a project! A couple of coats of white paint and a hand-drawn chevron pattern with a black paint pen, and voila! One of my favourite pieces of furniture in my house was born.