Furniture Before & Afters | DIY, Hacks & Restorations

I have always dreamt of having a “couple’s desk”. However, every apartment we’ve had hasn’t given us the proper space for this to happen. Luckily, for Valentine’s Day my guy surprised me with a rearranged space and enough room for my dream double desk to finally happen!In the before photo above, you can see our original desk. It housed his cluttered workstation and was large — but not large enough for two people.

With some white paint, elbow grease, and a few affordable accessories, Noreen and David turned a barely-used storage area in their 180-year-old Florida home into a peaceful and comfortable guest room.When I was visiting my parents Florida home earlier this month, I was so thrilled to see that they were transforming an old storage area at the back of the house into a guest room – and they didn’t even know it was Home Project month here at Apartment Therapy!

We moved into our home four years ago in a flurry of MA thesis writing and job changes. When we had time, we worked on decorating the bedrooms, living room, and dining area — but we pretty much ignored the loft space at the top of the stairs. We eventually bought a rug and our friend Karen kindly built us pine shelves while staying as a houseguest. Sadly, that was about it until last year, when our home office moved there to make way for a nursery.

Whit and Rachael Gardner of Our Mid Century are savvy stylists, whether we are about talking vintage or contemporary furnishings— the post that they shared with us for Home Project month proves it. When the search for an affordable mid century sofa kept coming up dry, they did a complete makeover of an affordable IKEA basic to help it fit in smoothly with their vintage style home. The “after” looks like a totally different sofa!…and the After!

When I moved into my apartment, the built-in cabinet in my bedroom was shoddily painted in yellow and blue with brown “accents.” To make matters worse, there were so many layers of paint that the hinges didn’t work well.Basically, I spent several hours over two weeks chipping away at the old paint — a process I found surprisingly satisfying. Beneath the yellow, blue, and brown, I found pink, gray, and lime green.

Ashley sent in the results of her just-completed upholstery project &mdash and it’s crazy! This afternoon I re-covered a set of four dining room chairs that my husband and I received from his GREAT grandmother, all the way across the Atlantic from Bermuda. It’s a lovely set — but the fabric in which they arrived was dirtied and dingy and was in desperate need of a change.