Furniture Botox!

This whole project can be traced back to the moment I walked out of the Marshall's bathroom and noticed a pair of pillows calling my name. Hey Gina, get the hell over here and take us home. 

I loved the color combos, I loved their vintage-y look and I really dug the pattern. And then I looked at the price, the large one was on clearance for $7 and the smaller one was $4.50. I think I screamed out loud. I tend to do that.

So I brought them home and immediately swapped out our previous came-with-the-couch pillows and was smitten. My husband, who can totally suck sometimes, hated them. He mutterred something under his breath about a Grandma and them being too quilty but frankly, I was too giddy over my pillows to even care. They were mine. All mine!

With orange colored curtains everywhere in our family room I knew that I wanted to introduce this teal-ish color somewhere else. But where? As evidenced in the picture below, our television is clearly too big for our little tv stand, so maybe a teal colored media console would be really cool.

Please note that we had several toy baskets on each side of the tv stand to try and cover up the 84 different cords that stuck out of the damn thing. 

But I digress, I oogled over media consoles like these

But they came with a $1000 price tag. So I went hunting and sure enough I scored this amazing dresser at my local thrift store for $80. I take that back, I paid $79.50 since we discovered a half dollar behind a drawer. Who said I wasn't lucky? It's solid wood, has tons of storage and really, really great bones. 

Here it is in our family room.

and yes, it came with a glass top too!

The hardware is pretty rad, huh?!

Now for the makeover part. I sanded the sucker down and added some pops of red paint in case I want to let it show through later on. Still not sure.

Next, I painted it with Benjamin Moore's Slate Teal

That picture does it an injustice, it's a little more teal than how it looks. But still, I wanted more age to it. So I busted out the espresso stain, and did a "paint on rub off" trick with a rag, allowing the stain to catch inside the grooves. I also spray painted the hardware an oil rubbed bronze color.

Finally, I removed the top drawers on each side, painted the insides the same color 

and drilled a hole in the back for cord access. 

And that my friends, is how you create a full media console in UNDER $100!!!

Random sidenote, Ted Talks are streaming on Netflix and we are totally hooked. 

Back to the console. 

Here's a close-up of the stain effect.

See how easy it is to give old furniture a makeover. What do you think? Should I sand down some of the grooves to let the red paint show through? Should I do even more distressing?

He's tougher than he looks, don't let the diaper throw you.


You can find inspiration anywhere. 

Give it a try!