Hello New Chest

Jay and I bought this chest for $20 at a thrift store last weekend. We knew that we could fix it up and use it as an end table in one of our bedrooms. The wood is pretty beat up, which is what we kinda liked about it. It would really be perfect for the beach house that we hope to have someday.

Here's the process of what we used to put some life into the chest. This is the chest/end table as we bought it.



Notice the nose? She's a little helper! :) Jay was cleaning it out and taking off the nobs in this picture.

Jay was literally walking out the door as I pulled out the sander. As soon as he saw it, I knew that he would be sticking around for a while. We bought the Ryobi hand sander at Home Depot. We, meaning he, sanded the outside of the piece. I loved that he was eager to help. I don't care to sand anyway.

We then painted it with Valspar Ultra Premium semi-gloss white primer and paint from Lowe's.

Here's the chest with one coat of primer and one coat of paint.

Smurphalicious...Isn't he cute? He loved sniffing around outside.

But then he took off with one of my paint brushes. (Thankfully, it was clean.)

And here's the finished product...

The knobs came from Anthropologie. THESE are similar, but we paid $6 and ours have a gold screw, nut and washer. They came from the store. I also decided to paint the inside of the drawers. I think because it seems cleaner to me, although they really would have been okay as they were.

The total cost of the chest was approximately $51:

• $20 cost of the chest
• $19 for the knobs
  
• $12 for the paint

Not too bad for a wood chest!