Nothing beats free!

A couple weeks ago I happened to check one of my favorite sites, freecyle. If you don't know what freecyle is, check it out http://www.freecycle.org/. "The freecycle network provides individuals and non-profits an electronic forum to "recycle" unwanted items. One person's trash can truly be another's treasure!" I have found freecycle to be helpful in getting rid of stuff, like old wedding items, or clothes etc, but had never been quick enough to secure a free item. I guess it was my lucky day, as I saw the buffet, quick sent and email and got a response saying if I could get it that night, it was mine. Yipee! So in exchange for a 12-pack of Guiness, Kevin agreed to take his SUV and help me bring the buffet home.

This is what is looked like when I brought it home.

Now I'm really not a fan of Ikea, as most of their furniture is veneer over particle board and everything has to be assembled using those darn cam locks. Although the stuff there is pretty cheap, I try to avoid it. But the difference here was it was FREE and it was solid wood. Granted not a hardwood, but the fact it was solid wood meant it could be sanded and painted. It also meant that if it needs some reinforcing down the road, I'll be able to repair it using wood screws, dowels, etc.

The first step was to remove the doors/drawers and get rid of the pulls. (which I'll probably list on Freecyle, they just aren't my style). Then I decided that pink would be a great color for the dining room buffet and I went to town. Just kidding. I already had some primer that had been tinted pink and since I was going to be painting over it in a dark brown/slate color, I figured why not. Plus it was fun trying to convince Geoffrey that it would go great with our current color scheme.

After letting the primer dry, it was time to get painting. I spent around $11 for a quart of Behr satin enamel paint. I put four coats on to ensure that I would get a rich color, plus I figured it would make the finish a little more durable. After the paint has cured for 30 days, it will even be washable! Then it was onto hardware. I found some very modern chrome drawer pulls at Home Depot (my favorite store these days) for a whopping $1.79/each. That meant for less than 30 bucks I was able to totally transform the look of the buffet into this...

The color is a lot darker/richer in person, but you get the idea. It contrasts really well with the white picture frame molding around the bottom half of the dining room and has a very modern, Crate and Barrel style feel. How it matches the carpet is another story, but anyone who has been to the house knows what a great fan I am of the carpet (bleh). Hopefully we'll be replacing the carpet with hardwood in the next few months.

The next step is to move the current dining room table to the sunroom, and move in the new table that Geoffrey has been refinishing. Its a beautiful mahogany table with 3 leaves. It has 2 coats of polyurethane on it, and G believes it will take about 6 total.

Alrighty, enough for blogging. Gotta go and get ready for a wedding we are heading to today. Have a great weekend everyone!