Scrap Bag Saturday...Cupboard love.

Joining in with Dreamer at Living a Slow & Simple Life for this one today. Thanks for the inspiration D!

One of the things on my To-Do list since we decorated the front room a while ago has been to find some suitable bits of replacement furniture for it. Years ago we 'inherited' an elderly nest of tables from my Grandmother - they were looking a bit tired when we got them, and after ten years further use have really got past the point where we want to live with them anymore. They're laminated, and the laminate is peeling off in places, so repainting wasn't really an option, and frankly, they've served their time. To replace the nest we actually need just two new tables - a coffee table for next to the sofa, and some kind of smaller lamp table or unit for the other side of the room. While browsing round the charity shop today, I found just the thing for the second of those.....

Yes, it's an over-varnished pine chest of drawers, but on closer inspection it is also sturdy, nicely made, with proper drawer bases rather than the chipboard that bends and eventually falls out that you get in cheaper units, and that lovely curving line top and bottom at the front.....really rather sweet,and instantly screamed to me that it could be made into something far nicer. Best of all was the price - £7! A bargain like that was always coming home with us! Straight after lunch I started work - first removing the knobs from the drawers, and then sanding down the rest of the unit.

I didn't worry about sanding off every last scrap of the old varnish - I jut wanted to "key" the surface enough to ensure that the new paint would cling OK..

All sanded down, I wiped over the whole thing with a sightly damp cloth to get rid of any traces of dust from the sanding. Then it was time to get on with the painting. I still had the remains of the paint we used for the front room, and felt that using those two colours would be a nice way of fitting the unit into the room. Note the "Paint stirring stick" on top of the right hand tin - doesn't every household have several of these?!

Several coats of paint later, and while the final coat dried I had a rummage through the cupboard and found the bag of spare knobs from our kitchen units. For some strange reason our predecessors left us a bag with about 20 of these...there are only 8 of them in the whole kitchen! Two more are now in use though - screwed onto the drawers from this unit they finished the thing off perfectly...

So there you go - a £7 charity shop pine unit given a new lease of life with a few coats of some paint we had anyway. It's the first time I've attempted anything like this and I'm really pleased with the way it's turned out - I wouldn't hesitate to urge anyone else to have a go as well, I've not in any way over-simplified what I did - it was as simple as it sounds!

Robyn