After college, my boyfriend and I were among the lucky ones to get jobs we love shortly after graduation. His took him to Pennsylvania and mine brought me to New York City.
Needless to say when he moved out of college, out of his childhood home and into a new apartment, he didn't come with much. With our student loans weighing on our wallets we couldn't exactly afford to walk into West Elm and furnish his whole place. So instead we have been finding pieces here and there at estate sales or off Craigslist. Great prices for solid furniture.
I am partial to older pieces as things were built a lot differently then they are now. They didn't use cheap press board or ply wood and they built things to last. These same pieces are outliving the families that owned them and making their way into the hands of people like me who will give them a bit of a fresh face lift, bring them out of the antique world and into the modern living space we call home.
The first piece we went in search for was a pair of end tables for the bedroom. We searched a couple discount furniture stores but the things we did find were cheaply made and over priced. It took some convincing to get my boyfriend to start tagging along to the estate sales and start looking on Craiglist with me but we finally found these really cute and simple matching end tables one weekend during my hunting.
I got them both for $25, TOTAL!
What a steal right! They screamed old world charm though and he was a little skeptical that we could make these more modern when he saw the scalloped bottom and the antique drawer pull. I assured him that he wouldn't even recognize the tables when we got done with them.
We went to Home Depot and picked up some sand paper, paint brushes, and some black paint. We have a hand sander which is the saving grace for time on projects like this. I couldn't imagine sanding all the surfaces by hand.
I gave him the hand sander and we got to work sanding away the original finish and giving us a clean canvas to start with. After the first coat we let that dry overnight in the garage. We gave it a second coat the next day and let it dry two more days just to be safe.
The hardest part of this project was finding new drawer pulls that we liked because the tables we found used holes that were not measured in the majority setting. We settled on a simple brushed silver piece that really helped finish off the whole look. $1.99 each!
The end result was better then we could have anticipated!
These now sit proudly on either side of his bed, finally giving the lamps something to sit on and a bedside for me to decorate!
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