If you all remember, our “new” tv cabinet looked like this when we bought it at Feather Your Nest.

And if you read that post you remember that our plan was to stain it navy blue.

It had lots of potential but needed a lot of elbow grease (and sand paper).

After some cleaning, sanding, staining, and painting we have a finished product, folks!

My husband removed the roll doors very easily which made the sanding and staining a cinch.

I also popped off the detailed accents of the furniture. They were actually stained plastic which you could not tell at first by looking at them. But they were cracking because they were so old so we tossed them. I just filled the remaining holes with stainable filler. We liked the piece even better without the faux details.:)

It only took me about two hours to sand off all the shiny finish, and then rub it down twice with a 50/50 mix of ebony stain by Miniwax and blue stain by Sherwin Williams.

Once I saw how dark the stain was I switched out the natural horn knobs  we had originally chosen with white horn knobs from anthropologie.

I really like how the white horn stands out on the piece now.

Once the stain was dry I painted the top with a glossy white.

Then we just put it all back together and brought it inside.

Tada!

And to top it all off I had been looking for a huge piece of cheap art (that I actually liked) to go on the huge wall above the TV.

I don’t know if you priced canvas art recently but a 40×40 inch piece is not cheap.

I found this “studio original piece” (or so it was marked) at Marshalls a few weeks ago for $60 on clearance.

Side note: I am all about local original art. But my husband and I both agree we didn’t want to spend much because we won’t be in this house too many years and who knows if we’ll even have room in our next house for a 40×40 piece of art.

Side note#2: While carrying this huge piece of art through the Marshalls parking lot I was hit by a huge gust of wind. Picture a 5’2″ woman trying to hold onto a 40×40 inch umbrella (aka canvas art) in a windstorm. Me and my piece of art almost ended up in Land of Oz. Fortunately, I look good in red shoes. 

Moving on.

What do you think of our makeover?

For the complete before and after of our living room go here.