Learning to be handy

I have never really been into refinishing furniture, or fixing or repurposing things. I did paint a dresser once, but that's about it. I have an old steamer trunk at my parent's house that I swore I would fix up that hasn't been touched in years. All this changed, however, when I got married, wanted nice things, and realized we couldn't afford them quite yet!

You all know my obsession with Freecycle by now, right? Well, I have to admit that when I can't get something for free there, I will also check out Craigslist! Because if I can't get something for free, might as well get it for cheap, right?

Our coffee table (which only happens to be clean for this picture, normally it isn't!) was my first Craigslist find. I absolutely LOVE the baskets underneath, and for $65, can you really go wrong? I tried to find a similar table online to see how much it cost, and the closest I could get was this one, which I don't even like and which is almost $300! So I was very happy with this find. It didn't even require any touching up!

However, our end table, which I decided was another vital piece of furniture we needed, did.

I can't really complain, because for $25 we got a matching-style table, but it definitely needed a little bit of work. The top was scratched pretty badly, and the legs weren't the same color as our coffee table, which was nothing a little spray paint couldn't fix.

Happily, a friend of ours is doing a lot of work in her home, and we were able to use both her expertise and some of her tools to work on the table!

So we sanded, finished, spray painted and glued (there was a loose piece of wood on the bottom of the table).

And finally had something we were happy with!

It didn't turn out as shiny as our coffee table, but I'm OK with that. I put a coat of Old English on it, screwed the legs back on, and now it sits happily next to our Freecycle couch! I even got a new table lamp with wedding gift cards for it.

All in all we probably spent about $60 on the table, which includes buying it and the materials we used to work on it, however, most of those we will be able to use again (we didn't use all the stain, for example). Plus, I searched for this online as well, and the closest thing I could find was this, which is just as much as the new coffee table!

Maybe I could make a living refinishing furniture...