Before and After: An Antique Hutch Becomes Two Brand-New Pieces of Furniture in a Brilliant $100 Redo

Furniture flips are often the most budget-friendly and eco-friendly redos. Typically, the found furniture is free or cheap — and it’s often being rescued from going into the garbage or a landfill. With the right supplies, you can transform someone else’s “trash” into something totally new.

DIYers and dumpster divers Chica and Jo‘s most recent project is doubly wallet- and planet-friendly because the pair managed to make two stellar pieces out of one. Chica found an antique hutch in her parents’ neighborhood, and not needing a hutch but knowing she and her best friend Jo could make something cool out of it, kept it in her basement until inspiration struck.

“Originally, we just planned to redo the bottom half,” Chica says of the hutch, which separates in the middle. “Once we took off the top, we couldn’t handle just tossing it, so we set it aside to think about.”

Out of the bottom half, the two made a living room console. It was the more straightforward of their two DIYs and just needed a new top (made from scrap wood), fresh sanding, priming, painting (in Behr’s Bubble Turquoise), and new gold hardware.

And out of the top part? They got creative and made a faux fireplace — perfect for any renters wanting to up the coziness in their space during the colder months.

“The biggest issue with the faux fireplace was trying to figure out how to disguise the front and create an opening for the fireplace,” Chica says. “We reused the shelves from the unit to create sides for the fireplace box, and the back of the hutch worked perfectly to cover up the old doors and make the arched opening!”

To get the curve of the arch just right, they traced a hula hoop. “We could manipulate the hoop into different arcs until we had it just how we wanted it,” Chica explains.

In total, the project cost less than $100 because Chica and Jo reused pieces of the wood hutch and scrap wood they already owned.

If Chica could change anything about the hutch-turned-console-and-fireplace, she would adjust the scale of the fireplace, which is just a bit larger than she expected it to be with the hearth attached. But overall, she’s proud of how she and Jo made the most of a found piece of furniture. “The only thing that is truly left is the front-middle door from the top of the hutch,” Chica says. “But never fear: We have kept that to come up with another project down the line!”

Inspired? Submit your own project here.