Furniture Rehab

We've been spending our project time lately not only outside, but inside, too - and we've recently completed transforming 2 scratched, worn, chipped, blah, mismatched items of furniture - a dresser and a bookshelf, more accurately - into some pieces that work in our decor scheme and are completely functional for our home.  Check out the boring befores and amazing afters (and one during...)! And as always, click on a collage to view a larger version.

The dresser:

The bookshelf:

What do you think? Here's the breakdown:

+ Both items were cheap or free and were bursting with potential!  The dresser was Rob's (and his brother's) growing up & we purchased the bookcase at Goodwill for just $20!

+ In anticipation of these projects, and others, we invested in a small orbital hand sander which saved us tons of time and will be a great tool to have for future projects.

+ We used the paint we purchased for all the trim in our home to paint the bookshelf (2 coats), purchased a pint of Ralph Lauren paint that was on clearance ($7.94!) at Home Depot in Midnight Black, and used leftover oil-based interior Kilz primer from our kitchen project.

+ We worked on both projects at once, which saved half the work in the prep and clean-up department since we didn't have to prep and clean up for each project like we would have done if we did them at two different times. And to be honest, the rest of our house pretty much turns into a disaster zone when we are doing a project because our attention is focused solely on the project - so that saved 1 extra instance of home insanity as well!

What projects have you taken on lately?  Any projects in the works since it's yard sale season, and you found something up-cyclable?