Small Metal Chest of Drawers Makeover

I've constantly got a list in my head (and a lot of the time on paper) of what is needed for the house, so I can keep an eye out for just the right piece to fit my needs, frugally.

I was in need of a "leg" for my work surface in my craft room. I'm always trying to re-use the things I already have. I already had the work surface. I have a degree in Interior Design, and the work surface is actually my old portable drafting table. I knew I wanted to save space by using the radiator cover as the other leg. I took a measurement to the top of the radiator cover, and it told me how high I needed to have the other "leg".

I found this absolutely hideous little 4 drawer metal chest at my local thrift store, on an extra 25% off Monday. It's the only day I shop there. Too expensive for a store that has 100% of their stock donated. ::gets off soap box::. I first wrote about this little bugger, here.

Why yes, that is faux wood grain. Ick. I can't find a picture of the price I paid for it, but I'm almost certain it was $4.99 (minus 25%). With the exception of the wrinkle on the top, it is in pretty good shape, and just the right height.

I did try to bang the wrinkle out, with a hammer. Didn't work, but that's totally OK. Drawer (pretty much) shuts, and for $5, I'm not really arguing. I did buy some new drawer pulls for it. I think I got the cheapest ones at Lowes, in the color I wanted. While I was there, I got a little 4 oz (maybe 8?) tester of black paint. There color scheme of this room is Black, White, and Tiffany Blue.

To start this project, I removed the drawers, and placed the shell of the chest onto the top of a Rubbermaid tote (to protect my floor). I was on my "Staycation" when I completed this project. I found (thankfully) an un-used FOB card. I work in the medial field. It was only partly funny that even on vacation, I can't get away from something reminding me of work.

  

I painted the front, the drawers, and the back, black. Paint covered quite well, so I think I only did one coat. I used the sponge brushes, kind of like a dabber. It worked, and was cheap! Now looking at these pictures (a year and a half later) I'm not sure if I did one or two coats on the back. I hate painting so much that maybe I just left it like that, since the only thing that will really be seeing it...is my knees when I'm sitting at the table!

Yeah. I hate painting that much. Sigh. Ok. Moving on. The outside! I had purchased some vinyl table cloths to protect my furniture from Fat Cat from peeing on it. Poor thing passed away, so I had a few of them left over (un-used). I happened to have picked just the right color for this room. Yay! They were on sale to begin with, and now I have a second life for them. I'm going to guess I paid maybe $1.57 for them at Target. I used one for this project AND the shelving project (you can see that here, after I write it up). That's one table cloth between the two projects, not one for each project.

I used the factory finished edge on the drawer side. I hot glued the table cloth to the metal. And...the above picture answers whether or not I painted a second coat on the back. I didn't. I don't even know why I thought I might have done a second coat. Painting. Meh. The back side is  not pretty at all. There was no point in making it pretty. I just folded the fabric over the back, and the bottom and hot glued it in place. As much as I hate painting, that's how much I love my glue gun!

Ahh, things are coming together so nicely in this room! And, it makes me SO happy that I'm doing this relatively cheaply, when possible, using things I already have. In the above picture you can see in the corner, the bookcase hasn't been painted yet.

This corner is looking pretty awesome! I kept it this way for a while. On top of the drawer units, those are little shelves. They're supposed to hang on the wall, but I never got that far with them. They are currently on the dresser, and a three shelf black bookcase (holding my fleece) is in it's place. I'm hoping once I get my fabric stash under control, I can put the bookcase somewhere else.

Side note, that laundry sorter came from the free section of Craigslist. I took the "bags" off and washed them. They also hold fabric. Mostly my scraps. The one closest to the plastic drawers has my rolls/bolts of fabric in them right now.

So, there we go. If I had to put a $ figure on this project, I'd say $1 for the paint. $2 for the pulls, $4 for the dresser itself, and $0.75 for the fabric. $7.75 total. I'm SO HAPPY with this little project.

What do you think?

STAYcation Update #2

August 12
Not much going on today. Went to the movies with Mom. She points out the neighbor has FINALLY moved a vehicle that has been straddling the property line, and not moved for over 2 years. PRAISE JESUS!

I think I'll charge up the battery. I pop the hood and a single wasp flies out. Hmmm....that's odd. I don't pay it much mind and proceed to stick my hand in and open up the hood. Yeah. This is what I find.

WTF! And...oh hey, F safety...lemme get a pic of this. It's about 4:30 pm when I discovered this. I called 2 places. Only 1 of them bothered to call back.

I have some projects that didn't make it on the original list. Digitizing two VHS tapes are on that list. A while back, I got a hold of a working VCR, and I went through all my blank tapes to make sure nothing was on them, that I wanted to keep. The only two things that made the cut were my skydiving video and a tape my friend made me while he was in Hong Kong.

At the beginning of the year, I had ordered some sort of device off eBay to digitize these two video's. I just now got around to doing it...but turns out...I couldn't figure out how to use the darn thing! So, I whipped out my fancy camera and tripod, and just taped my TV screen. The tapes were pretty crappy quality anyway, so I'm not really missing much by doing it this way.

I transferred the skydiving video and called it a night.

August 13
I woke up at 10. I'm getting used to this. ;) My wasp remover was scheduled to appear somewhere between 11 and 1. He called at about 11:20 and said he would arrive at noon, and surprisingly he did. In the meantime I managed to transfer the other tape. He suited up and took care of bidness. $200 well spent, TYVM!

Have I told you how much I hate painting? I do. I loathe it. Sigh. Unlike wasps...painting isn't something I will pay someone else to do. I had a bit of mildew I cleaned up then, I painted Kilz on the closet in the guest room. I also did *most* of the wall in the basement living room. It was too dark down there at night to see what I was painting...since I was painting white...onto an already white wall. Still need to work on the living room carpet.

 

 

I also took a stab at the shower stall. It's going to need some more work.

 

I pulled everything out from under the stairs, and then put a bit of it back in, along with some new stuff...But neglected to take a picture, and am too lazy to get out of bed to take one right now. :/

 

In the process of moving everything around, I decided, there was still too much random crap in the basement, I needed to purge a bit more...

August 14
Today started off with a crap-ton of errands.

• Take some completed projects to work (I only work 3 miles from my house)
• Return Priority Mail boxes to USPS
• Drop JunkStuff off to the local Thrift Store
• Target-Returns
• Walmart-Buy more carpet cleaner, 3 curtain rods, cat food
• Harbor Freight-Buy car battery charger, tin snips

My errands took FOUR HOURS! My gosh. I came home, and had lunch, then got back to work. Back into the darn basement. I'm kind of sick of being down there by now, and really want to work on my craft room projects, but they'll have to wait till tomorrow.

Paint is dry in the closet, so I load that up shelves, with my home improvement items, along with the rest of the paint that I found under the stairs. I "kinda" remembered I had put it there, and totally forgot about it at the same time. You ever have those moments?

I finished up the Kilz on the living room wall, and anxiously stuck the toy chest (you were wondering what that was, right? My Daddy made it for me when I was little.) back into the corner, along with all the crap that I had in the middle of the room. I'm being super nice, and letting my BFF store some stuff she's buying for when she moves in with her BF. Right now, I'd prefer not to have it in the house, since I'm tryna put crap together, but all in all, I'm happy to be able to help her out. Once her stuff is gone, my Christmas Stuff will go in the toy chest. Like my Christmas Container? I got four of them at Rite-Aid, after Christmas a few years ago. They were only $1.25 each, on clearance. YAY!

That stuff on top. That's the rest of the stuff that needs to find a home in the craft room. I still need to sell a bunch of the stuff I finished up, on eBay, so I can have room for the raw materials. About 80% of what you're looking at here is fabric. I think I have a problem. I inherited it (the problem, not the fabric) from my Mom. She had a huge stash of fabric when I was little. Not quite sure what she's done with it. Below is even MORE fabric! Rolls of upholstery and drapery fabric. Sigh. Bad thing is...I stopped buying fabric about 4 years ago. Hopefully the dedicated sewing space will help me whip up all kinds of great creations in no time!

At this point, I'm tired as a MoFo, and call it quits down there for the night. My feet were killing me. I thought I would chill on my nice comfy bed, and list my creations on eBay. I got as far as taking all the pictures, and that was it.

August 15
I woke up at 10 again. Oh it feels so good to sleep until my body tells me to wake up. I'm going to hate getting up for work next week :(.

I cleared the rest of the room, had lunch and got to taping. I cut in, and thought, "Wow. That's pretty f'n hideous.", but I kept at it. I painted with the roller and thought, "I REALLY  don't want to have to paint over this." It was impossible to get a good picture of the color. I swear, it's not as bad as it looks.

 

Painting took forever, but I pushed through and got it done. I then, despite the fact my feet were killing me, shampoo'd the rest of the carpet in the guest room.

Three little paragraph's really doesn't reflect the amount of work that occurred today :/

Okay, we're all caught up as of today . So, where does that leave us with the list?

• Re-hang stapled ceiling tiles that were removed when my water supply lines were replaced
• Clean Carpet Half way there. Guest room is  
• Replace Vinyl floor in Bathroom and Laundry Area Not gonna happen. I didn't order the flooring yet.
• Kilz 1 living room wall and bedroom closet
• Paint entire basement F that! Guest room is painted. That's enough!
• Make curtains for bedroom
• Clean shower stall Half way there
• Clean behind laundry area
• Set up bed
• Move remainder of fabric into craft room
• Move eBay shipping materials to craft room I took 4 boxes of priority mail boxes back to the USPS
• Move building materials to closet They're in there, but I think I'm going to end up moving them under the stairs
• Put mirror on Vanity
• Hang Shelves

Not doing so great on the craft room, but all the major basement crap is out of the way, so I think I'll be able to cross a lot of these things off the list, in the 3 days I have left. Say a prayer!

• Create a dry erase/tack board
• Finish all half done ebay sewing projects They aren't all done, but about 80% are as of today
• Paint and hang picture frames
• Create Magnetic Jewelry Finding Board
• Goo-Gone on containers for jewelry findings
• Create vision board
• Cover tall bookcase in black and white wrapping paper
• Create Labels for clear drawers
• Fabric wrap canisters (Thanks Barbara!)
• Organize fabric Stash
• Use up fleece stash 
• List fleece creations on eBay
• Hang curtain
• Touch up wall paint
• Cover chair cushion