weekend project

i am a garage sale junky.

truly, i am.

the other day, just for fun, i counted the furniture items that are in our home.  counting the 3 barstools as one piece, the kitchen table and chairs as one piece, and so on.... i counted a total of 32 pieces of furniture.

guess how many were bought brand new...

4.

the other 28 have either been given to us second-hand or purchased at a thrift store or garage sale... and that's just the furniture.

there is something gratifying and exciting about turning a piece of junk into something with appeal, all the while saving lots of money.  and i certainly love to save money.

so last month, when we decided we needed a tv upgrade, we needed a new piece of furniture to house this new purchase, seeing that our old piece of furniture would no longer be accommodating.  i knew exactly what i wanted and even described it to bryce so he could help me on the hunt. we spent week after week scouring garage sales, thrift stores and craigslist for the perfect piece of furniture that i envisioned in my mind... but to my dismay, we found nothing that would work.

finally, last week, bryce was driving around at work, when he spotted exactly what we had been looking for, just sitting on the side of the road in front of someone's house.  he pulled up to their house and someone just so happened to be leaving right then, so he asked them if they were getting rid of it.  they practically begged bryce to take it.  so he hoisted it into his truck and brought it home.  it was exactly what i wanted... well, almost... it needed a shelf, but we knew that we could easily install one.  so we got to work...

before 

gotta love, those heavy seventies hardware.  

you can see the beginnings of our shelving install inside...

after

total cost of project...

cabinet -  free

paint - $28

new hardware - $5

decorative oval in center - $4

shelf - free (i already had the wood)

grand total - $37

spray paint in my hair - priceless