Old Becomes New

Dave and I love refurbishing old furniture or changing something general into something for a specific application. Our latest project was to turn a free-standing wine rack from a thrift store into two smaller racks that fit in the small bookcases that we refurbished. At some point I'll sand off the crusty finish on the racks and put on a fresh new coat of lacquer.

Wine rack before:
And now it's all chopped up and made into new racks! Doesn't Davie do such a good job?

These book cases came free with the couch set we bought on Craigslist last summer--they were uuuuuuuuugly. The lady had stained them the same blue color as the couches and the edges were all rounded and boring. I had Dave add some moulding to the top and bottom to dress them up; then I painted them crisp white to match the trim in the dining room. We affixed them to the walls (like good earthquake-conscious Californians) and now they look all pretty. Especially with the cute baskets that I bought and now with wine racks. (Although I'm going to return those baskets...they were like $17 a piece! I liked them so much that I bought them anyway, knowing well that Dave would convince me to return them. They'll stay long enough for me to measure them (since they fit perfectly on the shelves) and search online for cheaper versions.)

Here's what the book cases (we have two of these) looked like when we got them. I realize you can't really see the book case in this picture, but you can tell that there's no pretty trim at the top and bottom and they are blue. I had to apply like 5 coats of white paint to cover that dark blue stain. They look very snazzy now, if I do say so myself.