{Furniture "Up-do"..}

{Don't be a chicken, you can do it!}

Well ladies and gents, its that time again. The time where my husband literally disappears for two weeks for medical school block exams and I find myself in my garage with a paint brush and a piece of furniture. My husband always comments that when he is gone for long hours he usually comes home and find something has been painted and the furniture has been re-arranged. I am one of those people who owns about 20 different duvet covers and about 30 different shower curtains because I have commitment issues with design and layout.

This time around, I re-finished a desk unit that was left in my house before we rented it. The house that I live in right now belongs to a friend of mine, which was a total score when we moved in because she left pieces of furniture for me that she was done with - this desk being one of those pieces. It was perfect in the sense that it fit exactly in the hole near the kitchen table, but wasn't so perfect in the sense that it was in some serious need of some TLC. I don't know about you, but when we have pieces of furniture that we aren't crazy about, they turn into junk magnets. We had covered it in old papers, mail, magazines, kids toys, and everything else that really shouldn't be that visible when someone walks in our house. More importantly, I wanted a place where I could sit at my laptop, pay bills, write letters to my brother on his mission, etc.

Here is the before picture (I am embarrassed to show it but want to make sure you can capture the transformation - currently a total junk deposit):

My big idea for this project was to rip off the back of it and put up chicken wire (hence the title of this post) so that I could clip things to it such as cards that we receive, bills that I don't want to misplace, pictures of my kids, etc. To secure the chicken wire, I put in small nails into the back of the piece and then took the edges of the chicken wire and wrapped it around each of the small nails to make sure it was tight. It was hard to hold into place and hammer the nail so I secured the nails first and then worked around the nails with the wire. I had never really worked with chicken wire so I was a little nervous, but it turned out just perfect - I am absolutely LOVING the rustic look that I achieved with the chicken wire AND it is functional (Fabuless!).


I painted the desk a shade of yellow - I am not sure of the exact color because it was one of the discount paints that had been returned to Lowes (again...Fabuless!). You really can't go wrong with yellow, I love every shade - even bright yellow - its like bringing a little piece of sunshine in your house.

My big trick (so nervous when I started this part) - I taped off the desk and used a dark walnut stain to paint the top of the desk, the top shelf, and the inside shelves so that it would appear to have a combination of finished wood and yellow paint. This desk is not wood, so I basically used my brush strokes to create a "wood look" and it actually worked. I must admit, while I was painting it, I started to sweat and my heart was racing because there were a lot of moments that I was convinced I had ruined it and that the stain was a bad idea, but it actually turned out perfect!


I switched out the old cheap knobs for some cute red knobs that I found at Hobby Lobby on clearance - I paid about 2.50 per knob.


I am loving this new little pop of color off of the kitchen..


..and I am so happy with how it turned out! If you have any questions, shoot me an email or leave me a comment below.

sincerely fabuless, Las Vegas.