Banged up to Beautiful

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I haven't done a blog post in a long time, and I haven't painted much furniture this year. It was a year full of other priorities, but now I am happy to be able to be back in the swing of things.

Here are a set of nightstands that were found on the side of the road by a friend. They had been clearly left out for a long time, they were brittle, chipping and in all around bad shape. In their previous life they had been a vanity and must have been separated at some point. They have grooves where they had been connected. 
My friend gave these to me, and I decided I was going to redo these for my daughter's college dorm room instead of selling them. The drawers were in good shape, but the body of these nightstands were in bad shape.

There is a lot of missing veneer and rough spots, and if I were selling these I would have spent time filling in those with wood filler, but all I did was wipe them down to get the grime off, did a little sanding to knock off the chipping paint and then started painting.

I stripped down the drawers, because I am going to be staining them and giving them a unique look.

I mixed my own color of grey from Annie Sloan chalk paint. I used pure white and graphite.

To add more interest I painting the trim pure white. I stained the drawers and use a stencil I bought from Hobby Lobby. After the drawers dried I sanded slightly to soften the stenciled parts. 

Here is the part where they used to be joined. I was originally going to leave it as is since they were just going into a dorm room, but I just could leave it as is. Filling it with wood filler would have been time consuming and you still would see a huge imperfection.

So here is my solution! I had a some nice strips of scrap wood that I cut to the right length and just nailed them into place.

Paint and Ta Da, that imperfection is now hidden. If I had had some fun trim pieces I would have done that, but I am going economical on this piece.

Now look at these cuties! You would never guess how ugly and abused they had been before this. Someone's trash really can be someone else's treasure!

These are some knobs I bought a long time ago at Hobby Lobby, but I am pretty sure they still sell them. 

I think for about $25 I turned these freebies into something special.

Sweet Victory!