Who doesn't love the Salvation Army?!?!

For a while I have been wanting/needing some piece of furniture for my home. Something with drawers that I could put against a wall with a nice lamp on it or something. I just needed some storage, but I wanted something that looked nice too. Well, I am just too cheap to go buy something new. As luck would have it, I ran into the Salvation Army one day to see if they had anything worth getting and, sure enough, they had a great antique piece for $50 and it was actually on sale for $35! I was so stoked! It was definitely in rough shape but I knew I could get it looking better.... Or I could at least give it a try annnnnd it was a huge possibility that it would be an epic fail. Now, I didn't turn out exactly how I would have liked but I think it looks pretty good! So, here is how it went for me....


After I got the big honkin piece of furniture back home, I went to home depot and stocked up on supplies for my first project. I got: 


One small can of beige paint
One small can of dark brown paint
Painting supplies
Primer
Sandpaper 

Because it is such an antique piece I really wanted to keep an old, worn feel with it so I was planning to distress it. 


First step, I attempted to take off the pulls on the drawers (I was planning on replacing them) but I couldn't get them off. They were all rusted and some were bent a little and I really didn't want to mess up the wood trying to get them off so I just had to work around them. But if anyone has any advice on how to get those suckers off, please comment! 


So, I moved on to priming. After I had her all primed up, I painted on a coat of beige paint. Once that was dry, I then painted on one layer of dark brown paint. 


After all the painting was done, I sanded away at the top coat of paint to get the beige to show through. This was the finished product....

I wish I would have taken pictures throughout the process but I didn't know I was going to be posting about this. From now on, I will be taking pictures, step by step!