Side bored...

You know how sometimes you start a small project and then it snowballs into something much larger? You change a light bulb and before you know it, you're buying sheetrock and picking out tile. Well...I needed an office space, so the nook off the kitchen was about to be repurposed. But before we could do that, we had to first find a replacement for the large buffet that was in that room (it wouldn't fit anywhere else in the house, but it provided much needed storage space).  We did have room in our dining room for a smaller sideboard, so the hunt was on to find one on Craigslist.

After a week or two of scouring CL for buffets, credenzas and sideboards (and every crazy spelling variation) we found a good possibility in a blonde modern-ish sideboard in perfect condition. The seller was asking $150, I offered $75, he countered with $100, so I bought it and we loaded it into the Subaru. This piece was STUPID HEAVY, let me tell you, so I was pretty glad it didn't need to be lugged up any stairs once we got it home.

Here's a "before" pic with 2 of the doors already removed.

The blonde color didn't work for us and the "wood" was actually a laminate so it was going to need a makeover. My inspiration was a piece I had seen in a  furniture catalogue that was a combination of black wood and copper (below).

Since the laminate doors couldn't be stained, we had new doors made by a guy who worked at our local woodworker's store. It was a little more than we wanted to spend ($100 for all 4 doors) but they would be solid wood, he would finish the edges, and he would drill the large round interior holes to match the existing hinges already attached to the sideboard frame. 

We painted the body of the buffet black, then my husband sealed it with an oil based polyurethane (after my initial mistake of using water based poly). The oil based gave us a nicer, smooth finish. Then we stained the new doors, poly'd them, hung them back up, bought 4 pulls at Home Depot and voila! A new buffet for our dining room.

The project was fairly time consuming between all the sanding, priming, painting, and trying to keep the cats from jumping on it while it was still drying, but for about $250 we got a great looking, one of a kind piece that would have cost us hundreds more if we had bought it new (the cost of my inspiration piece was $1499). Oh, and my old buffet...sold it in 2 days for $300 on Craigslist.

What I learned from this project:
1. Water based polyurethane dries too fast for some projects, so use oil based.
2. My husband did a great job fixing the mistakes I made.
3. Our cats love to jump on every piece of furniture we own.