Every year we have a humongous garage sale in May and all year long we keep it in mind as we clean, organize, declutter, purge and rearrange.
Every year we also end up selling at the sale pieces of odd furniture we have acquired from other garage sales (with the best intentions to “do something with it”), roadside finds (see previous reason for picking it up…) or things that others were giving away that we took.
This cabinet was one of those things; truthfully I am not even 100% sure where we got it from but I think it came from a friend’s basement a while ago. In May when Jim was situating the building and in garage sale prep mode this piece found it’s way to the “for sale” pile. A few days before the sale I had my trusty roll of tape and was pricing items. Usually our prices are really, really cheap because we want to get rid of the treasures. After all, we’ve already “let it go” by deciding to put it up for sale so the last thing we want is for it to be put back in the house/garage when the sale is over.
Anyway, back to this cabinet. I gave it a second glance and thought it was really a cute piece. I liked how the doors slid open in the front and back and the cute round feet it had. It was rickety as all get-out – needed some TLC to be sure, but I all of a sudden fell for this piece. I figured painted up it would be a great place to keep our new flat screen tv. Should I pull it from the sale and keep it? That is kind of like garage sale blasphemy in our world – you don’t decide to keep things you’ve already chosen to sell.
So I did the next best thing. I priced that baby high, secretly hoping it would not sell. I slapped a $15 price tag on the cabinet and agreed that if it sold for $15 I’d be pleased as punch to have $15 extra dollars to our name. If it did not sell I would be pleased too and this would move to the front of my “do something with that” list.
Friday…no sale. Saturday…no sale. Not even any offers for a deal. YES!!
Needless to say, I was a happy gal and made sure this piece didn’t get buried when Jim was bringing items back inside after the sale.
Our garage sale dud – now our revamped TV table
One hot day Jim set the table out for me (yes, he takes good care of me – always doing the heavy lifting/moving/organizing…I know I am lucky!). I had thought originally about using chalk paint on the piece but honestly I was in the mood to paint it now. Living in a rural area I do not have the ability to hop in the car and go buy chalk paint without driving 40 minutes one way. That was not going to happen. I went to the paint closet and looked through my quarts of brightly colored paint I have used on other projects and found this delightful yellow. Perfect!
After wiping down the cabinet, making sure the dust bunnies and driveway grit were off of it, I gave it a quick hand sanding.
Then it was time to paint it – in the hot sun.
Because originally I had thought about using chalk paint, I wanted kind of a distressed look. That being the goal I didn’t need to be perfect with the paint coverage, which was nice. I had to work in sections because of the sliding doors to make sure everything was painted. I also knew that we would be in and out of the cabinet fairly often to retrieve electronics, Wii controllers, etc so the inside of the cabinet had to be painted.
Did I mention it was HOT?
It took 2 coats to get the look I wanted. When it was all dry Jim beefed up the corners with some wood braces that you can’t even see. We moved it in the house and I am so pleased with how it looks.
What do you think?
I am in love with my garage sale dud – and the best part? It was 100% free!
