When we moved into our first apartment, we were ecstatic about being able to call a place our home and be able to decorate it in our own way. One issue we encountered, most important one as a matter of fact, our budget. We had an idea of how we wanted to make our space look but had no idea where we would find the items to fill our apartment. It wasn't until a friend of mine introduced me to flea markets that we got on a roll with going to flea markets and using Craigslist to find furniture that we could update. Our first project was a mid-century TV stand that we found via Craigslist for $75.00, which was much less than any TV stand we could find at stores and it fit our eclectic decor style. Here's the tutorial on how we up cycled this piece!
When we purchased the TV stand we didn't have too much of an idea on what color to paint it or if we simply wanted to stain it. Due to our apartment location (it's an old house built in the early 1900's turned apartment building right between two other old homes) we don't get too much sunlight in our living room, therefore we decided we wanted to have a color that would brighten up the space: we picked a golden yellow.
We started by sanding the TV stand down with a RYOBI sander. Once we got majority of the original stain off of it and smoothed all the dings down we started painting the primer on. The yellow paint also had primer in but we wanted to ensure that the TV stand had an even painted look. It took us about 2-3 coats of primer and we sanded the TV stand between each coat.
Once the last coat of primer was dry we started painting the TV stand with yellow paint; this also took about 3 coats to give it an even look.
After the paint was dry we decided on giving the TV stand accented legs by spray painting them with gold spray paint. We sprayed approximately from the middle of each leg downward.
The process was quite simple, just took some time due to waiting on the paint to dry. Although some prefer the original paint/stain color of older furniture, we really liked the idea of having a colorful statement piece in our home. Check out the TV stand over on Homes.com for a more thorough step-by-step process.
