Beautiful Buffet Makeover

It is finally finished! That giant piece that is our buffet and hutch is done…and looking beautiful, I might add.

First let me apologize for the poor photo quality of a few of the photos. It has been cloudy here lately and I must have taken about twenty photos trying to get one decent, blog-worthy, after picture. Alas, I just wanted to share the finished product with you so badly that I’ve settled…but just for today. If it becomes sunny in the next little while, I will replace the cloudy-day pics. Okay?

So of course, we start with the before.

Really this shouldn’t be the only before photo. Let me explain.

The hutch part (top) was actually given to us by a co-worker of Dean’s. For free. Glass doors, shelves, interior lights and all. Apparently he and his wife got it from Sears, but before they could get the buffet, Sears discontinued the line. So they found another complete piece they liked and gifted us the hutch. Sweet!  (Thanks J & K!).

Here’s the hutch all sanded down for refinishing:

Of course that meant that we had to find a suitable ‘bottom’ for the ‘top’. And just where do you think we looked? Why kiiji.ca of course! After a few days of patiently (ahem!) looking, we found a dresser of about the right size that conveniently had similar drawer profiles as the hutch. For $75. Yup, that’s it, $75!

Here it is all sanded down:

Next Dean attached the two pieces together.

And then I painted it with three coats of Behr Swiss Coffee, distressed it by sanding the edges and finished it with a glaze. We purchased some half cup drawer pulls from Lee Valley Toolsand painted them and the knobs that came with the hutch to match in a rich brown colour. I’m not sure I like how glossy those turned out, but it was spray paint I had on hand. And I was trying to be frugal on this project because it was unplanned.

Speaking of frugal, here is our ultra-inexpensive price breakdown:
hutch $0
buffet/dresser $75
Swiss Coffee paint $0 (on hand from other projects)
glaze $0 (on hand from coffee table project)
paint to mix with glaze $3 (oops! paint at home depot)
spray paint $0 (on hand from painting outdoor chairs this summer)
hardware $35
TOTAL $ 115

So here is the before again:

And da-da-da-da, the after. (Realistically I still have to rub in some Minwax Finishing Paste, but we have company coming and I need to clean the house! Oh and please excuse the floor – we haven’t got to that yet!).

Here are some close-ups of the distressing and glaze.

So what do you think? I love love love it. Totally worth all the hard work.