New TV/Media Cabinet

Hi friends.  Can you believe the school year is almost over?  My daughter only has two days left of first grade!  I still can't believe how fast she is growing up.  The last few weeks of school have really been keeping me busy.  I've been told that I must live in a bit of a time warp since I seem to be able to get more done than most.  I don't know if that's true, but I do have a heavy dose of OCD and once I set my mind to do something, I get it done!  Which leads me to my latest project... If you checked out my Summer Home Tour on the blog the other day, you may have noticed that I have a "new" tv/media cabinet.

We like to watch TV at our house.  Probably a little too much.  I confess I'm counting down the days (10) until the third season of Orange is the New Black is released.  My husband always complains because I binge watch my shows and then I have nothing else to watch.  Right now we've been watching the first season of Game of Thrones.  Wow... what a show.  Anyhow, we've had a 40" flat screen for a few years now, but my husband really wants a bigger tv.  The cabinet we had just wouldn't hold one so I've been keeping an eye out for something that is bigger and would work.

I came across this guy at Goodwill a few weeks ago and knew it would be perfect.  Plus at only $29 dollars it was within my budget.

I didn't really take any progress photos, but I can walk you through the steps I took to give this piece a makeover.

First I sanded down (with a hand sander) a few of the rough edges which were splintering.  I also took all the hardware off and removed the doors. Since the door handles were obviously not original and had some extra holes drilled into them I filled them with some wood filler.

I also filled any nicks and cracks in the rest of the piece.  I'm not gonna lie, this guy was in rough shape, but had lots of potential.

Next I chose a paint color.  Since I had two shelves that I wanted to flank it with to give it more of that Pottery Barn media unit feel, I knew I wanted to stick with black, but the current paint was a glossy, gloppy spray paint and would not work.  I chose a color - Tomcat by Benjamin Moore and had a quart mixed up.  I was torn between sealing it with wax or using polyurethane so I picked up a can of rub on poly as well.

Chalk painting is pretty much the only type of painting I do anymore, and I mix my own to save money.  I am certain that Annie Sloan paint is awesome, it's just not in my budget.  I use a high quality plaster of paris and really hot water to make my paint.  You can find my exact recipe here.

Once my ingredients were mixed a applied a coat of paint to the entire cabinet, including the inside of the cabinet.  I ended up applying 3-4 coats and let each coat completely dry in between.  Once the entire piece was dry I needed to apply some type of a seal so the chalk paint won't peel or chip.  You must do this or your paint will not be protected and it will chip eventually.

Since I have young kids I really wanted to have the inside cabinet sealed with poly.  I just think it will keep the paint from scratching as much when they pull out their baskets of dvd's and mess with the dvd player.  I used the wipe on poly on the inside and it turned out great, but it didn't give it that depth and texture that you get from a wax, so I decided to go with a wax for the outside of the cabinet.  I used clear and dark wax and buffed it with a microfiber cloth.  Find out more about the wax I use here.

I ended up just spray painting the hinges with some leftover oil rubbed bronze spray paint that I had on hand.  It looks black and blends so you can hardly see them.  I really liked the gold brass knobs that were on the doors already and didn't mind the pulls on the top drawers, but I didn't like the other brass pulls.  I looked at Hobby Lobby but they didn't have anything that would match the knobs I wanted to use so I ended up getting these simple pulls over at Home Depot.  They worked our perfectly and are really close in color.

I'm so thrilled with the way it turned out!  I'm not gonna lie, this basically took me two days to turn out and my back is still sore a week later, but it was definitely worth the effort. Dontcha think??

Do you have a any big furniture painting plans this summer?? Let me know if you have any questions about chalk paint, wax, ect.  I'm no expert, but I have done a number of pieces now and can offer lots of advice!!

I hope this inspires you to see beyond the less than beautiful dresser at the thrift store and inspires you to get painting!