it's about time...

This post has been a long time coming... Remember back in March when I purchased this guy from Goodwill?

Usually I work pretty quickly on furniture projects, but for some reason this console sat unfinished for about 6 weeks until I finally got around to painting him over spring break. I'm not sure what took me so long, since I had the paint and the idea of what I wanted it to look like from the beginning.
However, when I finally got started, the first thing I did was take off the doors and the knobs. I filled in the knob holes with wood filler, since I had a different idea for knobs.

Then I painted the console with two coats of Martha Stewart's Cumulus Cloud (eggshell) from Home Depot.

I wanted a pale grey with just enough depth to it that it didn't look white, which I think this paint color achieved perfectly.  After painting, I  used sandpaper to lightly distress the corners and edges. 

As I mentioned, we had no intentions of using the original knobs. We liked the individual squares created by the panes of wood on the front of the doors and wanted to accentuate those. We went back and forth about what kind of knobs to put in each square (especially because 12 of any kind of knob would be expensive) and finally decided on file cabinet pulls, for a card catalogue-ish look. These are a bit pricey in stores and on Etsy so I searched around online and found some on Architectural.net for a little more than $1 a piece. 

I ordered 12 brass plates, one for each pane. (Brass was the cheapest!)

  Of course, they didn't stay brass for long! As soon as the pulls arrived, I gave them a quick spray tan with some oil-rubbed bronze spray paint. 

Nick had the great idea to stick all the nails into the cardboard so that I could spray paint them easily. Smart guy- since the brass nails would have definitely stood out. 

We used newspaper squares to measure and mark the place for each pull.

 Then we set to work on the not-so-fun task of nailing each pull to the drawer. We ended up Gorilla-gluing the pulls on and then nailing them after the fact, to make sure they were secure. 

The finished product: 

We love the transformation! The grey contrasts nicely with the wood floor and we love the illusion of drawers that the pulls create. Now that it's finished, I can't believe how long it actually took to get started!