The Craig's List Freebie

It is so unbelievably hard for me to turn down free furniture.  You just can’t imagine.  I can ALWAYS see potential in the piece when I very first lay eyes on it.  Then, as I’m driving home I begin to realize when my garage door goes up I’m going to have to face Big Daddy.  Then, doubt starts to creep in to my brain.  Next my gut begins to cramp, ever so slightly.

Every.  Single. Time.

The chest I picked up this week was no exception.  

Here’s the actual CL add.

Believe it or not, it was in good shape. It did have a really awful crackle paint job on it though.  

I really like a natural top on my pieces but in this case the veneer was about 90% removed so I just sanded the rest of it on off and painted it.  

In my crazy little head I had this idea to make some type of bar out of this one.  Pinterest IS the Devil, I’m sure of it.  Once I get the idea in my head, it is ON. I sort of had a leg up on this one. I began by removing all the drawers.  Thankfully, two of them were already floored.  At first I thought I would keep the middle drawers in the piece.  What is it they say about ‘best laid plans’??  I could not get the drawers to go back in!  I guess the humidity in my garage was that bad. 

Everything I had planned in my crazy little head for this ‘Free Chest From Hell’ fell all to pieces.  So while Big Daddy was off on the bike, I was pacing the Rat Hole (you might call it a garage) like loon!  

Sometimes you just have to walk away from something to get a fresh perspective.

Let me just say . . . 

I suck at that.

I had MUCH rather pitch a screaming, snotting FIT!

But, I put my Big Girl panties on and persevered.  I thought to myself, if this thing was free, then ALL of it is gonna be FREE!  Period.  No running out to HomeGoods and spending gobs of $$$ just to doll it up.  Use what you got. 

Well.  OK then.

I looked through my ENTIRE stash of paints and finally chose Annie Sloan Duck Egg.  First and foremost, because I love the color.  Secondly, I had a lot of of it.

Ok, so far so good.  Thank you God for self-priming, self-leveling paint!

 All I really needed to do was figure out how to get those bottoms out of the two other drawers and use them as shelves for my bar.  I used two tools:  Big Daddy’s hammer and a large flat head screwdriver.

Starting with the drawer front, I hit is with the hammer untill the dovetail started to separate then I could just pull it apart easily.

This ‘Beat & Pry’ method worked like a charm!  Finally, this thing was going in the right direction. The drawer bottoms came out perfectly.  I thought about painting them but then I remembered a cute roll of gift wrap I had gotten at Michael’s for $1.50.  Then all that was left to do was go raid our ACTUAL bar cabinet and accessorize.

See where I used the gift wrap?

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