Great “before and after” Pictures!

Just had to share with you another great email I got from one of my readers a couple of weeks ago.

I love it when I receive these emails and pictures! :)

It is so much fun to hear and see that people are actually using the ideas I post about on my blog in their own homes.

What a blessing!

My friend, Gina, had written me last fall about the steps I took to paint the hutch in my kitchen black. Here is the picture of my hutch that she is talking about…

BEFORE…

AFTER…

Here is the email I received from Gina:

Hi Tracy-

I don’t know if you’ll remember e-mailing back and forth last October, so I just replied to your last e-mail to refresh your memory. After all these months, I was finally able to get to my china hutch. Here are the before and after pictures. It’s really hard to get a good picture of it. It looks better in person. I completely copied your hutch. I hope you don’t mind. Ever since I saw what you did with yours, I’ve wanted that for our dining room, even the white dishes. It took me awhile to find dishes that I liked. I found mine at Ross for $13. I had been collecting other things for awhile. I love the white platter on the bottom that was $10 at Goodwill. The green pitcher was a fluke. I saw that at Ross also and just loved the color. I had it somewhere else in the kitchen, but I love it in the hutch. If you look closely at the pictures, you’ll see I even have birdies in there! I got those at the dollar store and sprayed them gloss white.

Here’s what I did to this $65 hutch from Craigslist, with a little help from my husband. I added the beadboard to the back of the top part of the hutch. I wanted a “Ballard Designs” kind of look. The doors on the bottom took a little more work. I was kind of “winging” it as I went along. But, I basically replaced that hideous molding around the outside edges with something more simple and added new handles. I used a spray gun attached to our compressor and I loved using it. I’m very happy with how it turned out. The total cost including the cost of the hutch was around $150. I’m working on our dining room now and have a buffet that I got for $20 at goodwill that I’ve started on. I’ll send that along when I get done. Hopefully, it won’t take 4 months!
Thanks for your inspiration! I absolutely love doing this stuff and it helps to have ideas from creative and talented people like you!
:-)Gina

Here is her “before”…

And her “after”…

Bottom half “before”…

I love the way she took the molding off the doors. I wouldn’t have thought of that!

Here’s the “after”…

She also sent me a picture of a dresser she got off Craig’s list for 40 bucks…

She repainted the dresser and the hardware for her daughter’s room, and I think it is absolutely adorable now!!!

And here are some more pictures she sent me of the buffet she refinished. I love how she changed the look of the buffet by adding different feet to the bottom.

The buffet also had rounded edges on top, so her dad used his router to create a more interesting edge. I love that idea!!!

Edge before…

Edge after…

Gina, it turned out beautifully!!! I have been inspired by YOU to think outside of the box when picking out furniture.

You definitely have the gift of seeing the diamond in the rough!

Thank you for taking the time to email these pictures to me. :)

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Have a blessed Sunday,

Traci