Upcycling: 60s Style Media Cabinet & Desktop

Justin and I love thrift-shopping, and we typically always try to find things second-hand before buying new. Within the past couple years, we upcycled a dining room table and chairs (the table was found at Goodwill and the chairs were left by a previous tenant in our garage) and a TV cabinet (an old piece of furniture we found at Goodwill and turned into a media cabinet). You can find the post about upcycling the dining set here and the post about the TV stand here. 

Over Easter weekend this year, Justin and I were at a Salvation Army and found a gorgeous 60s style media cabinet for $10!!! Someone had purchased it a couple weeks prior, but never came to pick it up, so the store gave it to us for 50% off. We managed to (barely) fit it in our car, brought it home, and stored it in the basement until the weather got a little nicer and we could take it outside to sand it. While it was a beautiful cabinet, the exterior was faded and scratched, so we decided to sand it down and repaint it to match a record cabinet I purchased at an antique store a couple years ago. 

This is my record cabinet. I bought it already painted this color, but I thought it would be fun to match the new cabinet with this one since they are so similar in style. 

This is the $10 thrifted cabinet! It has sliding doors (with finger pulls) that go on the front, but we took them off to sand. 

Did I mention I love our backyard? It's given us space for lots of fun projects. 

After it was sanded, we brought it inside to paint.

We took the back and doors off to paint, then added a layer of clear coat before reassembling everything.

Lowe's sells those cool vintage finger pulls (that I painted black). Who would have thought? This is the finished product!

I love how it turned out! We currently have a built-in cabinet in our house where we keep movies and games, but this will serve as a storage space for those items when we move. (Which will hopefully be soon - I'm on the job market this year!)

The other project we took on this week was painting a tabletop for my desk. The legs and tabletop are from IKEA (and they are purchased separately). I previously purchased the white Linnmon tabletop, but it felt cheap and was already chipping paint within the first few months of having it on my art desk. Justin and I went back to IKEA last weekend and looked at other tabletops, and I loved the wood one shown below (called the Gerton tabletop). Unfortunately, it didn't match the other woods in the room where my desk is, so Justin suggested doing a vintage, old-barn-wood-style paint job on the wood tabletop. We looked into getting chalk paint, but it was so expensive, so I tried to create the effect myself with some basic white paint. See the finished product below!

I love the way this desk came together! I work here a lot, so I like how durable the new tabletop looks and feels. (This also has a clear coat on it for protection). Our next project is sanding and repainting our bedroom furniture!