D.I.Y. Project: Antiqued Silver Furniture

So this summer I decided to embark in the land of the unknown... furniture refinishing. I was changing the look of my room and when shopping I was always attracted to the antiqued silver mirrored furniture. No matter how much money I make, I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg. On average, an antiqued silver chest of drawer is usually about $700-1000. A nightstand could easily be $400-500. Well who wants to spend that much? Not me. So I decided along with my beau to do some hunting on Craigslist.com and local furniture liquidators. So what did I find?

Someone gave me a nightstand for free... They paid $25 for it but with the good you put out, good things come in return. We stripped it down and painted it silver first.

 I also found a desk for $60 on Craigslist. Some of it was veneer so I simply primed it and painted it silver.

 We then went back over the desk and nightstand to stain/antique them.

We then drove to the northshore and bought this beauty that we found on Craigslist for $150. This beauty was a steal. It is from the store called Scandinavia, and a piece like this is normally priced as much as $650-750. Although used, the condition of this piece was pretty good, with minor nicks in the wood. We decided to only prime this piece as well. Although we did a great job stripping the nightstand, it took FOREVER!

I also bought a small shelf for about $40 again from Craigslist and painted it as well. I did seal each piece with a polyacrylic paint. I decided to go with crystal handles and ditch the idea of mirrors on the drawers of each piece. I found knobs for 50% off at Hobby Lobby. At first I was going to order similar ones on Etsy, but with a price this good, I couldn't pass it by.

Finished results:

I'd say this came out pretty good considering it was both of our first times doing anything like this. Of course there were mistakes made and lessons learned but it was a great project to do together. The complete set of furniture cost me $275 for the actual pieces and about $100 -150 total for all the knobs and paints. The total was cheaper than purchasing a finished piece from any local store. It saved me a good deal. I plan to do a headboard of some sort soon but decided to take a little break form the DIY world after doing this.