Repurposing Old Furniture

My loving husband longs for things in our house to match.  I would much rather have things that are actually well made, and made from actual wood than have them match.  And so our mismatched house is filled with lovingly repurposed furniture (with some Ikea mixed in).

In my search for ways to hide my homeschool paraphernalia, I hijacked an old hutch from my Mom.  You see, my amazing mom and I are both a little addicted to old furniture. 

This old hutch that my Mom rescued from our local share shed was missing one leg, and looked as though someone had started to refinish it, and decided it must be too much work.  My mom hauled it home with no real purpose in mind for it.  Bonus for me!

Fast forward a few weeks, where I see it at Mom's house, and claim it for my own.  I forgot to take a picture before I started, but here is one of it now.

 

See the leg on the front left side is missing?  Perfect for my purposes (I wanted it shorter anyways). :)

 

Here are the hutch and doors mostly sanded down.

 

And the drawers sanded down and the bottoms taken out.  We had to cut new pieces of wood for the bottom of the drawers since the old ones were warped.  This resulted in sturdier drawers for all my supplies. 

 

I know that since having all 4 legs be the same length is pretty important, I got my handy hubby to cut them all for me.

 

My new shorter (all WOOD) hutch!

 

I went simple with the new handles.  I picked up some wooden handles at Wal-Mart for $7.50.  I may replace these later if I fall in love with something else, but for now, understated works for me.

 

I assembled all my supplies:

Wood Stain (left over from previous projects)

Foam Brushes

Rubber Gloves

Cotton Cloth (to rub off excess stain - just an old dishcloth)

 

Doors are done!

 

Doors and drawers are stained!

 

Back piece done!

 

Top and side! Now I clear coated two coats with a satin lacquer, sanding in between coats.  This protects the finish against water, etc.

 

 

So since I am terrible at remembering to take pictures, we get to fast forward to the hutch being painted inside.  I painted the inside to make it easier to clean, plain white since that was what we had.

 

TADA!

 

Stay tuned if want to know what it looks like (very) full.  I will be updating as I go along.

 

This project has been featured at:

 

http://www.thecraftyblogstalker.com/search/label/Linky%20Party