Thrifty Artsy Girl: DIY Big Box Store Furniture Makeover: Blue Grey Chalk Painted MediaCabinet Take Two

So this particular post is a little different than the norm. No, I'm not straying from my DIY activities to write about kittens or cars. I just uh, wrote it a month and a half ago. Yep I'm a slacker. I'm trying to change, honest! I just kept pushing this bad boy to the side for fall decor posts that I was excited to tackle. I debated on just scraping it, but darn it, I had already written almost all of the post and it was quite a DIY story. So without further ado here's my post:

I'm sure you all are wondering why I'm doing a second post on a chalk painted media cabinet since I was pretty detailed in my post Blue Grey Chalk Painted Media Cabinet. Well I won't keep you in suspense, I just loved how the first one turned out so much that I thought he should have a matching mate on the other side of the fireplace! When my bestie first saw the media cabinet she said, "It's too bad you couldn't find another media cabinet just like that one." I agreed it would look really nice and balance the room out, maybe give it almost the "look" I wanted with built ins...It would definitely pacify me while I patiently wait for Cory to build me my coveted built ins that I've wanted since move in day.

Thus started my hunt for another "matching" media cabinet. I searched craigslist under every combination of words I could think of, from media cabinet, to console, entertainment center, cabinet, credenza, even TV stand. All to no avail. Not even close to one matching cabinet, and honestly everything seemed really overpriced for beat up used furniture.

So I turned my search to online big box stores and Amazon. Since I wanted to get as close to the look of the media cabinet that I already had my options were very limited. For the (what I thought of as) simple, yet classic look of my media cabinet you would think there would be tons of cabinets that look exactly like it out there, but I couldn't find any in my price point. I only wanted to spend $100ish. Cheap, I know. I would love to buy all wood or antique furniture to populate my home but sometimes (most of the time, really) we don't have the cash to buy really nice pieces. So for all of you that share my furniture struggle this is the post for you since I'm going to show you an easy way to makeover and match furniture in your home so that it not only flows better but looks more expensive and personal.

After searching for weeks I finally found a media cabinet, on sale even :)!! The 10 Spring Street Hinsdale 2-Door with Center Shelves Console Cabinet, on Walmart's website, would work out almost perfect! They actually had a few different media cabinets and other smaller cabinets that were a very similar style to what I had. This cabinet comes in 4 different colors, which although very stylish, didn't go with my living room décor.

I already knew going into this cabinet search that I would be painting whatever cabinet I purchased the same color as the one I already had. So it didn't really matter what color the cabinet was. The white cabinet was the cheapest at $150, had great reviews and matched my other cabinet very closely. It was more money than I wanted to spend, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to find another used look-alike media cabinet unless I scoured craigslist everyday for 10 years. So I bit the bullet and bought it.

The cabinet arrived in just a few days, just in time for my weekend off work! Yay! I could get that sucker put together and get started transforming him! We spent that Saturday swimming and fishing in the river with an old friend visiting from out of town. So that left Sunday to get some house work done and work on projects.

We woke up on Sunday and our house was hot. 85 degrees hot. Our central air conditioner had gone out. On a Sunday. During the hottest part of summer when it was 90 degrees out. (Now that it's fall it's in the upper 50's *sigh* I miss summer already)

Cory went outside and checked our central air unit. He quickly surmised that the problem was a bulged capacitor. We googled away and made some calls to local parts stores and soon realized that Sunday was the worst possible day to try to order parts when you are not a professional. The parts stores are all closed and if we wanted our unit fixed that day we'd have to pay and arm and a leg for someone to come out. As a last resort, Cory called our family HVAC guy and left a message to see if he happened to have the part in stock at his home.

Not to be deterred, I threw on some shorty shorts and got to work doing laundry and some light cleaning. I figured even if we could get the part our house was still going to be a sauna for quite some time and I didn't want to waste one of my precious "get $#%& done" days. I pulled the giant box that the media cabinet was in into my kitchen and got to work putting it together. I must say that this was the easiest to put together of all the big box store furniture pieces I have bought in the past.

Here he is all put together minus the doors. It seemed like right when I finished ~~sweating~~ putting that bad boy together (go figure) our HVAC guy came through with a capacitor! Cory put it in and our air instantly worked!! Cory's DIY handiness had yet again saved us boatloads of cash!

A few days later I mixed up some chalk paint using my recipe with blue grey paint (At Peace by Dutch Boy) and got to work. I had to paint three coats for some reason, possibly too runny of a mixture on my part, who knows. That's the risk you take when using homemade chalk paint and I'm OK with the occasional hiccup if I'm saving money and getting a custom color chalk paint by making it myself.

I took a break from all the laundry and projects the next Saturday I had off to have a lazy/fun play day with Jackson. We decided the best thing to do with the big ol' box from the media cabinet was to make it into a train complete with a swinging door :). Jackson loved being a conductor and crawling around inside of it. I even drew little railroad tracks inside for him to push his trains in the "big tunnel".

Right when I finished with the chalk painting the cabinet we moved him to his home in the living room so that Cory could hook up his Playstation (he was seriously going through withdrawal). I glazed the cabinet right in the living room with my glaze from my Rustoleum cabinet restorations kit and damp cheesecloth to match the other media cabinet on the other side of the fire place. Here's a pic of me brushing the glaze on.

Here's a pic of me wiping the glaze off with damp cheesecloth. The wipe down process is just like cleaning ;). I took a sanding sponge and lightly sanded the edges of the top to match the other cabinet as well. Their tops were very similar in color so I didn't have to do anything else after that but clear coat and call it a day.

So now for pictures of the completed media cabinet. I put together a fall vignette right before I took these pics. You can see my fall trees and mercury glass pumpkin along with some of my other fall goodies :). The cotton stalks (I've been looking for cheap ones forever!) I bought at Michael's for a steal of a deal, $3.49 each!

I think the media cabinets match up pretty good! Overall for this project I only spent what the cabinet cost, $150. Not bad!

I think this cabinet is very high quality for the price I paid. I would give it 5 stars out of 5. It was easy to put together, looks beautiful (even before I changed it) and it's very sturdy.

Now I just need to figure something out to fill that blank wall space behind the cabinets. Maybe a shelving project will be in the near future ;).

Until the next post which is so owl-trageous (hint, hint, wink, wink) that I can't wait to show you all!