Home Updates: Dresser Turned Entertainment Center

We've made a few changes around here these last couple of months. I'm not going to show you all at once. {Because that would require getting too much of my house picked up at the same time.}

My husband's parents visited over Spring Break and because I was sick and my son got the flu, our local sightseeing plans were cancelled. Instead, they painted my foyer and great room, which includes the kitchen. I'm still giddy about it. 

{The color: Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams. I had Lowe's color-match it.}

Fresh color on the walls ushered in some other fresh updates. My favorite is a "new" piece of furniture for our TV. 

We've lived in this house 7 1/2 years and the TV wall has gone from this (Pier One pine armoire):

To this (our bookshelf / nightstands on loan until we could find something else): 

To this (IKEA Expedit unit that I thought was right but ended up being all wrong):

To this (a repurposed white dresser that gave me a less obtrusive look but that I couldn't quite get right): 

And finally, to this. Tada! 

Talk about the evolution of a space! Sometimes you have to find out what you don't like in order to figure out what you do. The Pier One armoire was fine but didn't fit our new TV. I sold it on Craigslist and used our nightstands in the meantime to hold the TV. The giant IKEA unit looked much smaller in the store than it did in our living room. {Let's face it, when a store is the size of a small country, everything looks smaller than it really is.} I sold it to my neighbor and had been patiently waiting for a replacement ever since. 

A friend of mine gave me an old dresser that I repainted but despite ridiculous amounts of sanding, I couldn't get some of the bubbled wood sanded flat. I experimented with a number of failed drawer coverings. Burlap, painted burlap, modge-podged patterned papers....all of them epic DIY fails.

{Exhibit A: #modgepodgeisthedevil}

Finally I moved the solid but bubbled dresser to my boys' closet {as they were in desperate need of some storage} because at long last I found the perfect piece at a local consignment store. 

Love at first sight. {She looked less orange in real life.} Here she is in the store:

Drexel, 1974. Great condition. Perfect storage. Fairly priced. 

I actually wasn't going to paint her but my husband, who rarely has an opinion about home stuff, looked at it in the back of my van and said, "Oh. You're going to paint it aren't you?" 

Obviously, I had to paint her. And you know what? I'm so glad I did. White may be "boring" and what I always end up painting my stuff but maybe that's because it's fresh and looks good with everything. Plus, the bronzey bling on the drawers and corners makes her glam instead of "meh."

DVDs, games, and controllers are neatly tucked away in the drawers and this middle cabinet is the perfect size for the PS3. 

Also? My boys figured out that they can apparently still work the PS3 via remote with the middle door closed. Good thing my husband realized what they were up to or this post would have been titled, "How a DIY Project Burned Down My House." It was 100 degrees in there.

After I finished this project and felt oh so happy about things, I discovered this little gem in my home ideas notebook. It's a binder I've had for years and even with the advent of Pinterest, I still rip pages out of magazines and file them away. A year ago I filed this page but had forgotten about it:

How about that? The wall color is almost the same as mine and the style of that dresser is eerily similar as well. I have a shiny turquoise lamp in my living room and my favorite accent color is that bright yellow. It was fun {and reassuring} to see that this piece I'd been waiting for was meant to be, a true fit for my style, form and function.

Now, if only I had the talent and motivation to hack that gorgeous painting...

..............................

{Other Recent Home Updates Posts}

Anatomy of a Gallery Wall

Bookcase Bling