going green... with paint that is

A few years back I was living in a wonderful apartment in a very up and coming neighborhood of San Francisco known as the Dogpatch. I have to say, my room wasn't small and neither was my 14" long closet, but thanks to an odd angled wall in one corner I didn't have a ton of room for nightstands on either side of my bed. I searched all over the Bay Area for nightstands that possessed a bit of character and fit my specific dimensions. Finally I found a pair of nightstands and unfortunately, an accompanying cal-king headboard at a consignment shop in San Rafael. The nightstands, that the previous owner had repainted silver, were the perfect dimensions at just 15.5" wide. After a few weeks of posting the headboard on craigslist and a number of no-show potential buyers, the headboard found its way out onto the curb. Of course, it was snagged in no time by some passer-by for free. So, there they were, two perfectly scaled silvers nightstands. At the time the silver was a good fit for a room painted Disney's "Space Dust" (that's a whole other story), but once I moved and they moved out of the bedroom and into my new office/guestroom, the silver no longer worked.

I wanted to make a big change on a very small budget, preferably under $10 for both. I had a bit of Behr's "Scottish Isle" paint left over from another project, so armed with some sandpaper, a foam brush and my paint, I set to work bringing new life to my nightstands.

Once I finished painting them, I realized that the knobs looked even worse than before. Just a few days later on a trip to the the outlet mall I found these wonderful woven metal knobs for a penny-pinching $1.39 a piece at the Restoration Hardware outlet. So for a total of $6.04 (4 knobs + tax), some leftover paint and a little time and elbow grease I was able to bring new life to my consignment store finds.

Do you have a favorite furniture refinishing project?