DIY-Day

The summer before my college senior year (well, senior semester), my best friend and I got an apartment.  This meant that I had to buy furniture.....and for a poor college student, that means find cheap stuff!  My dad actually built me a bed frame because I refused to buy a bed, I was fine with putting a mattress on the floor and living like that. Ha! I got a cheap desk and entertainment center from Wal-Mart that served it's purpose for that year. I gave my desk to a friend after I graduated and the entertainment center was used for a couple more years once I got married and we were too cheap to buy a nice new one.

Our old entertainment center

But, as things tend to do, it broke.  Well, it honestly had been breaking since the day I put it together, but I'd made it work! But when we moved into our apartment, my husband and I decided it was time to try to make our place look a little more age appropriate.  I looked for an entertainment center at every store I walked in to.  I had a very specific idea in my mind of what I wanted my TV to sit on and nothing I could find would work.  So I went to my favorite idea page, Pinterest.  I found a picture where someone had taken a dresser and transformed it into an entertainment center.  That was it!  I went home to visit my parents that next weekend and asked how attached they were to the dresser that was sitting my old bedroom.  They let me take it.  Time to start my first real DIY.

I never took a picture of what the dresser looked like before I'd already started working on it, but it was an off-white color, with some pretty terrible handles. 

So first things first, I took out the drawers and took the handles off.  Then, I sanded it all down. I also removed the slides on the top row because I wasn't putting them back in.  I decided on this turquoise color because I loooooove the color and knew I wanted to use it somewhere in our home.  And I thought it would be nice to have a pop of color in a room with mostly neutrals. 

Applying the first coat

I had to use a couple coats of the blue color because despite sanding it, it was almost like it didn't want to hold the color.

Our apartment was a danger zone for a while

Once I'd painted the dresser, we ran to Lowe's to find new handles.  We opted for these awesome ones that were like a rusty silver color.  We got a few knobs and six handles for the drawers that we were keeping.  We also went over to the lumber department and picked up a durable piece of plywood and cut it to fit the top row to stabilize it so the cable box, DVD player, etc. would be secure.  We secured the plywood with a couple screws, though they were pretty secure without them.  As you can see in the above photo, Chris had also drilled holes into the back of the dresser for the various cords to go through.

I painted the fronts of the drawers, and actually decided to paint the inside of the drawers a dark brown, along with the plywood we'd put into the top shelf. After they'd dried, I attached the knobs and handles and put it back together. 

Finished!

It was such an easy project! And cheap!  I was lucky enough to already have the dresser, but I know that you can often find them at thrift stores, flea markets, etc.  We still use it, and it's easily the prettiest part of our apartment! :)

Hope y'all enjoyed!

See you soon.

XOXO.