Oh, Buffet...How I Love Thee!

I am happy to report that the buffet is 95% finished! I was going to wait until we reached the 100% mark, but I was so tickled with the results that I had to share. Before the big reveal, let's do a quick recap:


If you remember, when I found the buffet it looked like this...

But, knowing that beauty lies within, one must look past the exterior (which at the time I found it on the street corner, was covered in puke green paint) and see the potential of something.


So with the help of my friends and family...

and a pup who insists on being present for all major projects...

you can transform something rather hideous into this...

Buffet? Is that you? Well don't you look fabulous!


Let's break down this furniture transformation: 


- We stripped off about three layers of paint, circa 1970, sanded and buffed the exterior.


- The buffet originally came with spaces for two small side drawers - one of which was missing when I rescued it - and two cabinet doors. Since it would look weird with a missing drawer, we removed the cabinet hinges and sawed off the frames for the top two drawers to open it up as display space for vases, coffee table books, etc.


- We primed and painted, using Sherwin Williams Iron Ore for the exposed interior space and Sherwin Williams Comfort Gray for the exterior.


If you recall, I had originally intended to use Milk Paint, but when I priced it out, it was far to expensive and I couldn't justify the cost for this piece. So I decided to use paint that we had on hand after tackling a kitchen makeover a few months ago. Trust me when I say that there was no shortage of options in our basement. When we started the kitchen project we weren't sure what color to use and ended up with no less than 12 paint swatches on our wall - it was literally ceiling to floor.  


To help us sort through our swatch dilemma, I jumped onto Nesters blog to use her color palette as guidance and fell in love with Comfort Gray. Unfortunately for our kitchen, it didn't work, but as the base color for this piece, it looks pretty awesome! 


Obviously we are missing knobs and before it's all said and done, I'll probably apply an antiquing glaze and a coat or two of poly to protect the top. These final details need to happen in the next two weeks as we will be hosting family for the holidays and this piece is currently living in our guest room, so no pressure.

What do you guys think?