Before and After, a Garage Sale Makeover

A couple of weeks ago, a spur-of-the-moment swing by a neighborhood garage sale yielded this $25 steal:

Solid oak. Good drawers. Boogered up on the top by small hands with markers.

I've been looking for a piece of furniture to go here, in what a Realtor would call our "formal dining area". No formal dining set has ever lived in this room, it has and always will be a computer area and extension of our living room.

The shelving unit that currently resides on this wall has definitely seen better days, especially since some of her shelves became dislodged and never re-lodged. Sometimes Harper likes to sit in these narrow little spaces created by vacant shelves. And sometimes she likes to dig through my baskets, unorganized and filled with pictures, cards, and other things that don't have a true "home".

After an unexpected, unscheduled Saturday afternoon appeared on our calender, I decided it was the perfect time to spruce up the garage-sale find a bit and headed out on a quick trip to Lowe's.

A few hours later:

Behold. The red chest of drawers. (I know, I need to lower that picture on the wall just a little bit now.)

I had big plans of picking up new hardware at Lowe's, but apparently this particular size of drawer pulls on the top three drawers is a "hard-to-find" size. Awesome. The Lowe's man suggested I check online for new pulls. Unfortunately, there appears to be a different and unique drawer pull for every man, woman, and child in the world, and I didn't possess the time or the patience to look at all of them and make any kind of decision.

So back on went the old drawer pulls, and I'm hoping they grow on me. They may get a coat of black spray paint in the near future. Or they may still get replaced all together. I briefly thought about sanding the edges of the chest up just a bit, for a little "antiquing", but when we chipped an edge while we were putting the drawers back in, I decided that in a matter of weeks Little Red Dresser would find herself a bit "naturally antiqued by various children", and left well enough alone.

Fortunately for my (now a little red-splattered) garage, I have very few empty Saturday mornings for garage-saleing over these next few weeks.