My DIY creation — vote for me!

So just this week I finished my nifty little DIY project for the Great Big Texas Home Show‘s Ultimate Upcycle, and I flove it!! I took a humble, dated night table and turned it into a supremely fabulous Nightstand and Pet Lounge! Check out the stunning transformation …

I’m amazed at what a little paint, paper and fabric can do to a piece of furniture, and I have to say I’m HOOKED! Now I want to hit every thrift store in town and DIY the heck out of everything! Wanna know how I pulled off this metamorphosis? Read on, you crafty chickadee … and if you like my stunning creation, vote for me here!!

First I sanded down the top of the nightstand, to take off some of the stain and damage that it came with — methinks a smoker used (and abused) this piece, grack! This is what the surface of the top and the hutch used to look like …

As I said: Grack!

I didn’t aim to take all of the old stain off, just enough to get through the damage and have the paint adhere. The color I chose was Behr’s slate-like Pencil Point, in a semi-gloss that also included primer to help the adhesion.

After painting a few coats and loving it, I needed to find accents in a color that would pop — I’d seen orange-gray pairings on, believe it or not, wedding-related Pinterest pages, and I was in love. I wanted to paper the inside of the hutch and line the drawer, and a friend stumbled upon a gem of a solution at Paper Arts, a veritable haven for the stuff:

The paper is not only handmade but hand painted in tiny gold flecks that shimmer in the light. Fabulous! Here’s what it looked like in the drawer, though no photo does it justice …

That’s me flattening it out after using Mod Podge to glue it in. That stuff’s fantastic!

Anyhoo, I spotted the perfect fixture at Jo-Ann Fabric, an orange drawer knob with a dark gray center.

Also at Jo-Ann, I found what I initially thought to be the ideal fabric for my pet pillow — a mandarin orange thing festooned with white bicycles. But once I had the paper, which I was way more in love with, I realized it and the fabric would clash. So it was on to IKEA, where I found a lovely handwritten-style gray script against a white background.

So I sewed up an easy case for the 16×16″ pillow form I got at Jo-Ann, and voila! DIY magic that I never could’ve imagined would’ve come from my fingers. I don’t want to part with it, but I know it’s for a good cause if I happen to be picked as one of three finalists.

The next step? Why, it’s where YOU come in! Go vote for MOI as your favorite upcycler here at the Ultimate Upcycle challenge’s Facebook page. Thanks in advance for your support!

Tags: Product