Bee-fore and After...

Sorry to have been slacking on the blog lately! Today I bring you a long overdue post. I am always thrilled to see a great "before" and "after" so thought I would share one of my favorites that now lives at Bee Angels. Above you can see my childhood dresser complete with pennies ticky tacked to the mirror for each year since I was born and a 0% Angel sticker. Thank goodness my style of decor has changed since my early years! Now see below for several "after" shots.
When I learned that Bee Angels would be moving, I knew I wanted to acquire new display pieces. For those who know me, I like to recycle old things and give them a new life (and am cheap!) My mom, always my partner in crime in this department, mentioned a few pieces she had around her house that she would not mind getting rid of/was tired of looking at. So one night we toured many a lovely pieces of furniture and visualized and looked for the potential in each piece (and made quite the to-do list for my dad/husband.)To start the transformation, my dad took out all the drawers and then cut out the drawer frames (not sure what you call that part...the tick-tac-toe kind of design you would have after taking out the drawers...) and then added a board at the bottom for the floor as you can see in the above and below pictures. Then he added a light (also recycled and free from my sister's home remodeling).

He also added two wooden shelves across the mirror, which my honey later stained.

The majority of the furniture I used for this project was made of fake wood. You know the kind that has a plastic like wood, grain coating? I really was leery and wondered if it could be painted and then hold up to customers picking up and moving merchandise. So after much trial and error, I kicked myself for not doing the always easy Internet search. Not sure what I was thinking...obviously, I wasn't. After reading about several options, each piece was lightly sanded to get rid of the shine, then cleaned, then sprayed with Kilz white primer from my honey's paint sprayer. (He looked like Casper the friendly ghost after all of my projects that night.) Then after the paint dried for a few days, I did my part and distressed each piece.

I am really happy with how it turned out and think my dad and honey were surprised. (If you could have seen all the crazy looks I got through this process!) And my mom, always my teammate by my side receiving those same crazy looks, now has new shoe racks (one piece used to hold her shoes), less clutter, and was a warrior making sure dad got the to-do list done in a timely manner. A true group effort~with a happy busy bee product.