Armoire before and after…

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This is another story of a furniture hand-me-down.  It is a beautiful armoire that is quite large and HEAVY—as we found out from moving many times over the years.  Once we settled in our current home, we realized that this beautiful armoire didn’t look great with our hardwood floors and it was too big for the entertainment nook in our great room.  So it was in our bedroom for a while, but it was too big for that space.  After much scheming and planning I decided that we were going to make it work in our great room.

Here’s what the armoire looked like originally…

It really is a pretty piece, but I just needed it to be four inches smaller at the top, and two inches smaller at the bottom where the moldings are.  And I wanted it to be black so it would contrast my hardwood floors.  May I just say that my hubby and other resident carpenter family members thought this was a BAD idea.  I am a little bit on the stubborn side, and when I think something will work, or that I am right—I really think I’m right!  And if you tell me I’m not, I will prove you otherwise!  You think my family would know that telling me something won’t work is just going to make me fight harder to make it work—HA!!  I won, and we started the remodel…

My hubby took off the top molding, and the bottom molding and started to prep the armoire for painting.  And that’s when trouble set in.  We had quite a few hiccups on this one!  The legs were attached with metal to the bottom molding, so we had to find new legs.  Then we borrowed a paint sprayer from our neighbors and it spewed out big globs of black paint that couldn’t be fixed and so it had to be sanded over again.  Then the finish of the paint wasn’t turning out right….you get the idea!  There was trouble during this project, but I had to show my family my remodeling vision was right—so we just kept going.

But once all the little problems were solved, we had an armoire that looks like this…

It is just what I wanted!!  TA-DA!!  I really needed a big piece to fill the extra tall nook that was built into our house.  I still had so much room on top of the armoire, but the tall metal vases, and extra large basket made it were the right size to fill the space and balance the room.  Big Bessie looks much better now that she’s not the same color as my hardwood floors, and she’s happier in the family room, as am I!

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