I have found that life is better if, sometimes, you just wander into a charity furniture store, pick something cheap but solid, buy it, strip it, paint it then love it forever after. Just me?
Before: £5 
After: £5.50 or £300 in a London boutique
Before: £60 & £20 
During 
After: Ooooh, trendy!
And finally…my favourite so far:
Before: £40 
After: unique
You need to pick solid wood furniture otherwise the finish will be poor, but the furniture paint nowadays make this almost foolproof. The paint is around £10 a pot but you don’t need primer or varnish (waxing them afterwards is a good idea as it protects and leaves a matt finish) but as you can see, I used the same paint (from the same pots) for all of these projects.
The satisfaction of creating your own, unique pieces of furniture is great, but so is supporting charities and being all frugal about it too.
The Errant Moon 
I love it. You’ve classed-up each of them. Is that wallpaper at the back of the shelves? What a transformation for what I assume is minimum effort. One thing I love in particular is that you have not gone shabby-chic. I never really liked that trend. I think it looks fine in a French Gîte. I’m not opposed to the distressed look, that is my own personal style after all but something about shabby-chic annoyed me. Maybe it was the super rich influencer yummy-mummies pushing it that annoyed me. Am I really that shallow? Don’t answer that.
Thank you 🙂
I never really understood why anyone would want something already called ‘shabby’ in their home…it felt a little like a con by sellers of dinged up furniture, so I think we’re on the same page.
Before: Lovely old piece that needs work sitting in Goodwill shop.
After: Lovely old piece that needs work sitting in my basement for years.
So many ideas. So little execution.
Yes, that is always the risk!