Before & After: Goodwill picture frame

Recently I've been spending my lunch breaks at the Goodwill. You might be thinking, really? Really. I'll be the first to admit that I plug my nose when I walk in to the Goodwill. But ever since I saw this little girl snatch the coolest antler jewelry rack from the store shelves, five seconds before I got my hands on it, I've had this fear that someone is going to beat me to the punch and find something amazing. It sounds stupid, I know. 

So I'm here to show you all of the amazing things I have found on my lunch break at the Goodwill. Starting with this picture frame I bought for $2.25. 

First off, I'm obsessed with Instagram and have been looking for ways to print the pictures I take. I found this cool app on the iPhone called PostalPix. They print and mail your Instagram pictures to you in various sizes for a low price. It's so awesome! I ordered an 8x8" sized picture, and this frame just so happened to be 8x8". Perfect!  

The frame was obviously ugly. So I found this cool product called "Rub N' Buff". You just "rub" this metallic finish onto your picture frame. It takes five minutes and gives your frame an antiqued-look. Awesomeness. And how cute are my two boys in that picture?!

Before & After: Goodwill cabinet turned bar

While I was still living in SLO I found this cabinet at the Goodwill for $12.50. I loved the design of the doors and knew that I could make it into something amazing. Seven months later, I finally got around to this DIY project. I had decided a while ago that I wanted to put table legs on it to make the cabinet taller. I then decided that it would be so cool as a bar/buffet in our dining room. After many coats of primer, paint and trips to the hardware store, it's finally done. 

The before:

It's super important to take all the hardware off before you paint. Otherwise the hardware will get stuck to the wood and you'll never be able to change it (i.e. put cute Anthro knobs on it)

After the first coat of primer

The doors were really hard to paint. It was hard to get the primer and paint into the little swirly designs.

First coat of paint.

This was the most difficult part of the whole process. The table legs. Ahh. I seriously went to the hardware store four different times trying to figure out how to drill these things in. The legs wouldn't screw in tight enough and would break off when I turned the cabinet over. Thank goodness I found Brian at Ace Hardware. He showed me tons of cool little tricks on how to get the table legs in the cabinet, all nice and sturdy.

Then I decided to paint the little swirly designs gold, to make them pop!

I also painted the handles gold.

My next step is to put a wine glass holder and wine bottle rack inside to officially make it a bar.