Designer furniture on the budget - DIY furniture restoration

Hi everyone

So, I was not going to post today but I must process my thoughts and the best way I can think of is to type them up 😊. It might be the only type of therapy that you can get paid for! Instead of spending a lot of money on a psychologist you can share it with people that would support and understand you. If you are lucky you might even get an advice to solve your problem and if not well just rumbling about issues makes it feel a bit easier.

To get you all up to speed… we are building a house and got land all sorted. We went to colour selection last Monday and we got a quote back from the builder. Of course, we exceeded the budget and now we must look for ways to cut back. It wouldn’t be such a problem if I wouldn’t notice that some of the prices previously told us by the builder do not match the ones on the list, I need cross check all our emails that we exchanged previously to find the variations.

It is very confusing, and it got me wondering if it is all just a case of miscommunication or I should have a red-light moment before signing a contract. I will have a meeting with a builder on Friday and go through all the pricing and I'm hoping to straighten up all that confusion and move forward with the build.

On a good note I am very happy that my husband and I agreed on most of the things regarding the house and we like the same styles and features. It made selecting everything a lot easier and I can not imagine arguing about all little things that we were choosing. I hope we can work together to achieve the right house for our little family 😊.

As the new house is going to be bigger then the one we had, the need for extra furniture arise. We both really like the French provincial/farm house look but it can be costly investment, so I started to look on the internet for cheap/free pieces that would be good for restoration.

In my next few posts I will share results of our efforts. We are just learning the art of recycling and discovering new skills every day. I hope you would like our first victim 😊.

I spotted that shelf for free on gumtree.

Lightly sand/cleaned it and it was ready to be painted.

We used chalked paint that is ideal for this type of restoration, nice matt finish and thick coverage.

After two coats of paint we waxed it with clear and dark wax for an extra aged look.

I also spotted new knobs that were on sale and they completed the shelf perfectly. Let me know if you like it? What are your favourite decorating styles?