Reduce, reuse, recycle!!

I'm totally not one of those "green" people and I'm pretty sure my carbon footprint is rather large.  However I am one of those "frugal" people and I like to save money wherever possible.  I love the idea of recycling furniture.  New furniture is so expensive and people are practically giving away old stuff on cragislist that is perfectly good, but may need a little love.  I really wanted a buffet server or cabinet of some type for our dining room since we just had a lot of stuff laying around and it looked messy.  I had been searching craigslists and goodwills for the exact one that fit my image and I found it at Bill's Bargains in Mt. Holly.  This also happens to be the place I bought my dining room table.  Anyhow, I found this server for $45, bought it, tied it to my car, and brought it home.  To buy one like this new in the store would cost anywhere from $150-$300.

Here's what it looked like before:

It was in decent shape.  You can't tell by the picture, but the top was all scratched up, plus I wanted to paint it black anyway to match my dining room table.  The hardware was pretty nasty too.  So I took all of the hardware off, sanded down the scratches a tad and then primed it with KLZ spray primer

Here it is on my balcony all primed up.

It was fairly easy and went on fairly quickly.  I waited and hour and started to apply the black spray paint that I bought...which I believe was Rustoleum brand?  I didn't like how it was going on, I'm a control freak and I couldn't control the splatters.  Plus it was windy so it wasn't going on very well.  I went back to Home Depot and bought the same brand paint, just the regular kind and went back to work.  I had to apply a few coats and it was tough being that I only had a small space to work on, but here was the result:

I think it turned out pretty good!!  I made some rookie mistakes in regards to brushes and drippage.  When I primed the knobs I left them on top of the server so there are 3 circles that I couldn't really cover up with paint, the look sort of like water ring stains.  I also took off the hardware and tried to clean them with my jewelry cleaner.  It got most of the tarnish off, but I think they add some character to the piece.  I think I'm also going to do something with the interior cabinets like put contact paper or modge podge fabric just to make it look really spiffy.  Anyway, I'm super happy with the outcome and now I can't wait to paint some other kind of furniture :)

~Jami