Are you the kind of person who likes to change things, move furniture, paint and redo stuff? I am forever redoing and tweaking stuff in our house. Currently I am on a mission to add more bling to my life. For me that means so much more than jewelry. I like to add sparkly, golden, silver and copper touches throughout.

But, I am on a budget and I am pretty happy overall with the furniture we own, it just needs the occasional update. When we remodeled our tiny galley kitchen 10 years ago, we decided it would work so much better for us if we got rid of the “formal” – read way too small dining room and convert what was then the family room into a dining room. That was one of the best decisions we made! It allowed us to purchase a nice big table that could comfortably seat 6-8-10 people.

And all was good until I began noticing this heavy feeling whenever I walked into the room. It just wasn’t right. Now, for someone who loves decorating and design as much as I do you would think I could have figured out why I wasn’t loving it much, much sooner, but anyhoo…here it is:

Can you guess what was wrong with this picture? Well, of course you can, because you are sooooo much smarter than me!

It looked like a big, dreary cave with the inside painted the color of poop. Now, how could anybody expect a cheery vibe radiating from that? In my defense, when I chose the color for this room, brown was a thing and I was going through a pretty rough time. #whyyoushouldn’tpickpaintcolorsrightafteryourkidwasdiagnosedwithautism ;)

So last Summer I decided enough was enough. It had to go – all of it. And so I set about brightening up the entire space by painting every. last. square. inch. Including every piece of furniture except a hutch, that turned out to be worth actual money.

One little black cabinet got a fun treatment that made it into one of my most favorite pieces every and that is the transformation I want to share with you today, because it was fun, cheap, easy and looks like a million bucks.

Sadly, I completely spaced getting a real before picture from when it was black, so this one will have to do:

I was so eager to make this change and happened to be priming something else already, that I just went for it. After the primer cured I painted it with this cheery turquoise that happens to be one of the main colors in my window treatments (another post on that soon!).

You can see that this took several coats! And when those were dry I added some gold accents to the front door panels like this:

I wasn’t concerned about getting the gold (just regular craft paint I already had on hand) on the panels, because they would be covered up by sheets of scrapbook paper.

Ha! Now you see where I am going with this! I decided to vary the look of the panels just a little bit to give the cabinet some added interest.

And for the bling I found this adorable knob!

Isn’t it amazing how just a little paint, leftover scrap book paper and a new knob can change an other wise boring black cabinet? We now use it to store office supplies in our newly designated desk area off the kitchen and dining room, where it will live happily ever after…

Do you like to change the look of your furniture, or make over pieces found at thrift stores, garage sales, etc? I have several more pieces to show off in future posts and would love to hear from those of you who have tackled similar projects.