December 06, 2022

A Fast and Fun Furniture Makeover

It's no secret that I love Pottery Barn furniture. I had never been to a Pottery Barn store or even seen their furniture until I bought a piece via Facebook Marketplace several years ago. I was really surprised at how good the quality was, considering Pottery Barn is a chain retailer.

(Does anyone remember that Friends episode where Rachel bought an apothecary table from Pottery Barn "a flea market", that was made in the "days of yore"? Hahaha. This video shows the storyline in four minutes, if you're looking for a laugh!)



After buying that piece, I started looking for more on Marketplace. There was no way that I would ever spend the retail price at Pottery Barn--it's insanely expensive--but the quality of the furniture was so good that I started seeking it out. I found pieces that were all scratched up and paid a fraction of the retail cost, then I sanded and painted them.

I LOVE my coffee table and living room console. I bought the pair of these for $100 total! The hardware alone would have cost half that.

I removed the glass from the console doors and replaced with wood, then sanded everything down and painted it (including the hardware). I LOVE how they turned out! Here are the before and after pictures:



After that, I wanted to do more. Our house is not huge, however, so there really wasn't room (or a need) for more.

About a year ago, I decided we needed to get shelves or cabinets or something in the master bathroom. The cabinet we had in there was very tall and skinny (and of poor quality), and it was hard to store anything in there. So I started looking for a piece of Pottery Barn furniture for the bathroom.

I found a piece on Marketplace and thought it would work perfectly. It was another console, but I knew it would work for what we needed. I can't remember how much I paid for it, but I know it couldn't have been more than $100. It wasn't in great shape and I really hated the drawer pulls.


I knew I wanted to change out the hardware and remove the glass from the doors like I had with the other one. I was busy with other projects, though, and I just didn't take the time to paint it--so we'd been using it like that for a year.

Now that we are remodeling the bedroom and bathroom after the water damage disaster, I decided it's time that I painted this thing! I knew I didn't have quarter-inch plywood for the doors, and even though it would have been no big deal to go buy some, I had an idea pop into my mind.

Our previous living room console had a fake fireplace in it. I liked that part of it because the lighting that it gave off at night was cozy. I didn't like the actual console, however, and the quality of it wasn't great. It was constantly getting nicks in it. When I refinished the Pottery Barn console, we moved the fireplace one into the garage.



Anyway, when looking at this current piece, I had the idea that maybe I could take off the doors and remove the shelf, then put the fireplace into that space. It looked like it would be a tight fit, but I measured a few times and it was pretty much perfect.

So, I removed all the hardware from the Pottery Barn console, cleaned it really well with TSP, and lightly sanded just the top. (Sanding really hurts my carpal tunnel, so I hoped the TSP would work well enough that I wouldn't need to sand the whole thing--and thankfully, it did!)



This is what the top looked like before sanding:



After that, I primed it with Kilz, and then painted with leftover Sherwin Williams oil-based paint in Spare White (the paint I used for the other furniture and for our molding). I dug around in the garage for some knobs that I knew I had from our previous cabinets, and I attached those to the drawers.



Finally, I removed the fireplace from the old console (it was only held in by four small screws) and carefully placed it into the freshly-painted console. I was so excited that it fit perfectly and I love how it looks!



Here is the before and after:


The flames aren't real, obviously, but I love the light that they give. And there is an electric heating element to warm our bedroom--you know I'm always freezing. (We're keeping this in the bedroom now that we have a closet in the bathroom.)

This was a very fast and easy project, and the result is better than I imagined. There is still a lot to do in the bedroom, but it's starting to come along now!

3 comments:

  1. I will never get over how creative and handy you are. WOW!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks fantastic. If you ever get bored you could set up a sideline in upcycling items.

    ReplyDelete

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