Good Will, I Love You

Since Nate and I discovered that we had HGTV a couple months ago, Flea Market Flip has become one of our favorite shows. If you've never seen it, it's basically 2 teams of two who have $500 to buy old, cheap pieces, re-create them and then re-sell them for a profit.

And since new furniture definitely doesn't fit into our budget and we're always looking for cheap fun activities to do on the weekends we decided to do some flipping of our own... minus the whole resale thing. 

I've been on the hunt for a good pair of nightstands for weeks. I want to spend under $75 for an identical pair, and refinish them with new Anthropologie nobs and some shabby chic cream paint to display against the chocolate wall in our bedroom. No luck on such night stands but I did find this steal for $20 at Good Will.

It's the perfect size for our small apartment and goes perfectly with my rod iron scroll obsession. I felt like it had good bones. So, we bought some shimmery bronze spray to spruce up the rode iron color and some dark stain for the wood.

I have to be honest, it wasn't as easy as I'd thought - sanding this bad boy took a couple hours. Although I did learn that our power sander is one of my favorite tools, sanding on our tiny balcony in the heat wasn't the funnest thing we've ever done. And not to burst the DIY bubble, but stain and all that jazz wasn't as cheap as I was expecting either. But aren't all projects that way?

In the end, I think it has some character and a story behind it. I hope we still keep these little creations one day when we're super successful with fulfilling careers and tons of money (hey, it could happen).  I hope we never forget that these creations symbolize a time in our lives when we were young, broke, unfulfilled, but making the best of a dinky apartment filled with more love than we know what to do with.

I think Kenny Loggins said it best when he wrote,

And even though we ain't got money,
I'm so in love with you honey.