Upcycled Home Decor: Furniture Makeover for Beginners

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Before the pandemic, I had no prior crafting or furniture flipping experience, and I'm completely self-taught. If I can take something off the street and fix it up in my own apartment, then you can too. [MUSIC] Hey. My name is Bronwyn Tarboton. I'm a Broadway performer and content creator with a passion for home decor. When the pandemic hit, like many of us, I found myself with a lot of extra time on my hands. I started transforming whatever furniture I could get my hands on and sharing my projects online. Now, my social handle, NYC Trash to Treasurers, has over 40,000 followers and has been featured in print and TV. I love showing people just how easy it is to make something really cool from something totally undesirable. In this class, I'm going to teach you basic upcycling skills that you can use across many different types of projects. I'll start by walking you through my treasure hunting process so you know what to look for when searching for items worthy of a makeover. Then I'll show you some simple techniques to give a boring cabinet a total makeover. [MUSIC] You should take this class if you're an aspiring DIYer or a home decor enthusiast in need of encouragement or ideas. Or maybe you're just someone who's sick of staring at that ugly piece of furniture that you've been meaning to get to for years. Whoever you are, this beginner class will give you a solid foundation of skills so that you have the confidence and know-how to explore your own upcycling projects in the future. Let's get started. [MUSIC] 2. Getting Started: [MUSIC] Welcome. I'm so happy you're here and excited to teach you some of the key skills that I use in many of the projects I post on NYC Trash to Treasures. Before the pandemic, I had no prior crafting or furniture flipping experience, and I'm completely self-taught, so I promise, if I can take something off the street and fix it up in my own apartment, then you can too. Maybe you're thinking, I don't even have a piece of furniture to work on or know where to start looking, how do I know what's worth fixing, and what types of pieces will look good in my home? Don't worry. I got you. Before we dive into projects, we'll talk a little about where I get inspiration and some tips and tricks to help you find the best pieces. First, you'll need a piece of furniture to work on. I'm going to show you a range of techniques on an old cabinet, which I'll explain to you how I found in the next lesson. You don't have to do these projects or have these exact pieces of furniture, you might have an old dresser or bookshelf. The skills I'm going to show you, it can be used on tons of different types of furniture. The basic tools that I'll be using are drill, a screwdriver, and a tape measure. Then there are some things that you can add on based on how you want to customize your own piece. For the cabinet, I found cute handles and knobs on Etsy. I ordered new legs and a gorgeous one-coat furniture paint that I also ordered online. We'll also be doing some contact paper which you can use on a bunch of different pieces, and mine looks like marble. Again, you do not have to try everything. If you just want to repaint the cabinet, buy some easy, one-coat furnished paint. Or if you just want to install new hardware, just buy some new legs or hardware. It's totally up to you. Now you know what tools we'll be using, you know what types of furniture we'll be looking at. But before we dive in, let's take a step back and gather some home decor inspiration so that you know what to look for as you get started on your own trash to treasure journey. I look forward to seeing you on the next lesson. [MUSIC] 3. Gathering Inspiration: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to tell you a little about how I gather inspiration that eventually informs my projects. So if you're a total beginner, you might have no clue what style, color, or type of piece that you want to work on or how you want to decorate your home. This is where a bit of fun research comes in handy so that you have a sense of what you want your creations to look like before you start searching for furniture. My DIY journey started with me having furniture that I really didn't like and researching online how I could make it look better on almost no budget. Now it's become second nature to me to collect and save images, to build up a picture of what I like, and get ideas for future projects. DIY and decorating can feel very overwhelming if you're just getting started. So let me show you how I know what types of things to hunt for in the first place. Start with a mood board. I use digital mood boards like Pinterest and Instagram where I can save or pin visuals of cute rooms or furniture or a fabric that catches my eye. But you can also make an old-fashioned scrapbook or take pictures of things that you see in real life. It's not just home decor inspiration that you can collect, you can also save actual upcycling project ideas or tutorials that other people have done. Most of my projects start with a generic Google search like dresser upcycle or make bathroom mirror cuter. I like to look at things that other people have done to get tips, tricks, ideas, and save them in a DIY product inspiration board. The first thing I want you to do is go wherever you're comfortable, I like Pinterest and Instagram, and just start looking at photos. You can google generic things like living room decor or painted dresser. Any photo that comes up that you're drawn to, save it. Don't worry about what's in it. Just start saving tons of things that you like. After you've done this for a while, go back and look at the things you've saved. So say you have a room, that's a living room. Look at what's actually in that living room. Is it a black lamp? Is it a pink dresser with gold legs? Start to look at your photos and see if you can find similar things in all of your photos. Once you've started to identify some colors, styles, and patterns that you like, you can use that information to help you choose what you're going to do with your project. For example, before doing this class, I kept saving green dressers with gold hardware. So instead of buying a certain dresser, I can take any dresser, paint it green, and add gold hardware. Another thing you can do if you're having trouble identifying common elements is ask a friend to look at your board. I did this when I was trying to decorate my living room and my friend noticed all the photos I had saved had gold frames with vintage prints in them. Once you've started to identify some colors, styles, and patterns that you like, you can use that information to help you choose what you're going to do with your project. If you're looking for common elements and you're having trouble and feel like your style is all over the place, that is totally fine. My style can be pretty eclectic too. It's still going to be good to have ideas of things you like, and once you start actually doing projects, you'll be able to hone in more and more on the types of things you're going to like in the end. Now it's your turn to start your own digital mood board or physical scrapbook collecting images of furniture you love, and after you have a good amount in there, start looking for any common themes. These mood boards will become an inspiring resource that you can keep returning to time and time again anytime you start a new project. I'll be giving you some more tips to follow that'll help you find great pieces of furniture to work on. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 4. Choosing Your Furniture: [MUSIC] So now you have your mood board and a better understanding of your personal style. We need to find a piece of furniture to work on. I'm going to give you a handful of guiding principles you can use when you're looking. Following these simple tips should prevent you from being overwhelmed or confused. What we're trying to avoid is you coming back home with pieces that are way too challenging to fix or so ugly that no amount of paint will make them look good. The goal is for you to feel inspired and excited but also focused on what you're looking for. Whether you're searching on the street, in the thrift store or online. So if you're ready to start your furniture hunt, I recommend the first place that you shop is your own home. Take a good look at what is already in your space. Do you have an old bookshelf you don't like anymore, or maybe an old dresser, or side table in the garage that you're not sure what to do with. Often the things that we already have but don't like can be totally transformed with just minor tweaks. The techniques I'm about to show you in this class can also be used on fixtures that are already installed in your home, like your kitchen cabinets or counter tops. So you've searched your home, maybe you found something great to up-cycled, but if you didn't, it might be time to look elsewhere. I'm going to tell you how to find fantastic free or very cheap furniture that other people don't want anymore. First place we're going to look is my personal favorite, the trash. As unglamorous as it may seem, get to know your areas trash pickup schedule. Most towns and cities have a website where you can look it up. In New York, it's DSNY. So there's usually a certain day of the week or of the month that's set aside for bulk trash pickup like furniture items. Don't be afraid to ask your neighbors, or building maintenance workers about the schedule. I'll find it easiest just to pay attention to around what time and date is when I see most items out, I find the best items closest to when they're put out for pickup. So for me in New York that would be around 4:00 P.M. Then when you go out looking, come prepared with a few things. I usually have my backpack and an extra tote bag to put small items in. If I can't carry an item, I call an Uber, but be aware that heavy or bulky items might need to be taken apart beforehand. So you can remove the drawers from a dresser and carry them one by one. If I really can't bring an item, I try to remember to have a screwdriver with me so that I can take the handles or the legs off. That's actually my favorite way to get hardware that I can use on other pieces and it's completely free. If you don't have any luck finding anything in your own neighborhood, consider searching a fancier area outside with lots of large apartment buildings were more trash is gathered in one spot. If you don't feel up to walking the streets, you can always find free or very cheap furniture in second-hand furniture stores like Goodwill or online sites like Facebook marketplace and Craigslist. Those sites are great because you can search specifically for items people are giving away for free or selling for very cheap in your own neighborhood. So whatever you're hunting ground, whether it's curbside, thrift store or online marketplace, here are some quick guidelines that I follow when choosing what to take home. First, I look for things that are simple. It doesn't have to look expensive or ornate and you don't have to know if it's valuable. If it's a simple piece, even like an Ikea bookcase or shelf, then you have so many options for things that you can do to it. Second, I look at the item's shape. Do you like it? Is it aligned with your mood board and personal style? You can change the color and add a hardware. There's not much you can do with the shape that you don't like, so start with that. Next look for items that are structurally sound. As a beginner, do yourself a favor, don't take home anything with big broken sections, wobbly shelves that you don't know how to fix, big dense or chips and the wood. Next up, we're going to start fixing up my $15 thrift store cabinets, see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 5. Installing Hardware: A quick and easy way to totally change the look of your cabinet is by swapping out the hardware. So hardware would be legs, handles, knobs. This is my cabinet that I got at my thrift store for $15. It doesn't have any hardware, so we're going to add it. If your cabinet does have hardware, you can simply swap it out, so you don't even need a drill for that. If it's a knob, you can unscrew it with your screwdriver and put a knob in, if it's a handle, you can swap out a same-sized handle and no drilling is involved. There's lots of different places to get hardware, I suggest going back to your mood board, looking at the cabinets you like, looking what hardware they have and then you can buy some just like that. So I ordered these on Etsy, Etsy has a ton of cute hardware, you can also get it at your local hardware store. I picked pretty nice hardware because I'm trying to create a more expensive look. Long handles do that really well, so these are both doors, I chose to do handles that can pull the doors open, and then it has this extra piece for no reason, so I got knobs because I want to add them and make it seem like a faux drawer. That's actually something really fun, you can add hardware on even where it isn't necessarily needed just to create whatever look that you want, as long as it makes some sense. The other thing we're going to be adding are legs. Legs are an amazing way to make almost anything look more expensive, I picked these out because they're gorgeous and tapered and they have the extra brass foot, so we should be able to work some magic. Hardware you can add on by drilling a hole. For the legs, they're all added on by basically a simple plate. These are the easiest type of legs, they already have a plat, all we need to do is drill holes and screw them in. Other legs have a separate plate. It's all the same principle, you will drill holes, put the plate on, and screw the legs in. If you're going to be drilling, you definitely want to do it before painting so that the dusk doesn't get everywhere and mess up your quota paint, so next we're going to measure and prep for your hardware. There aren't any hard and fast rules on where your hardware should go, you just want to put it somewhere that makes sense. So for example, if this was a drawer, the handle doesn't have to go exactly in the middle, it can go anywhere that makes sense, but you just want to make sure that things are centered and that they match on both sides. Now, I'm going to flip the cabinet over so that we can measure and drill the holes. You could do center of the doors, I'm feeling like that's a little close together, so I'm just going to eyeball and find something that feels like where knobs would go if I was pulling on a drawer, and then make sure it's symmetrical. So let's just make sure it's the same on both sides and then mark it. If you're not painting your cabinet, you want to put tape down before you mark anything, but we're painting over it so we can scratch it up. First, let's measure and see about where this is. It's four-and-a-half inches from the side, where is that one, about four and half. So let's just set it that we're going to do four-and-a-half inches from the side. All good, as long as it's the same on both sides, and then we also want to make sure that it's centered up and down. So this is about two inches, which makes it easy, we'll cut that in half, mark one inch and that's where it will drill. There and then measuring one inch from the top. I'm just going to make it a little circle so I know where to drill, and then we'll do the same on the other side. Four and a half inches from the side and then one inch from the top. Before we drill, I'm just going to double-check because once you drill you cannot go back. Top to bottom, it's 11.5 inches, the center is 5.75, which I know is five and three-quarters. There's this center point, 5.75. You can just double-check from other side and make sure we didn't measure wrong, we are good. Then we're going to find the center of the handle so we can match it with the center of the doors. This is six inches across, in-between, so divided by two is three, so if we measure from the center out, that's where a whole should be. So now we have approximately where our holes are going to go distance wise, I'm going to use a piece of tape to figure out exactly where we should drill. I'm taking the tape, let me grab a screw, and putting it on the handle. I've done this by eyeballing and measuring it before and this is just way safer, you can't mess it up. I'm using the screw that goes with it to poke through. That way you know, you have that distance correct. Let's see. Now we want to make sure that this piece of tape is level, you could use a level if you had one, I don't have one with me, so I'm going to measure from the inside of the door and make sure it's level, an inch and a quarter from the door. Let's put our other piece of tape on and then I'm going to just look at it one last time, make sure it looks good before we drill. So we have our holes marked and I'm feeling good about them feeling like their level double, triple check them, so next up, we're going to drill the holes. For knobs in hardware, the standard sizes of a drill bit are 316 and 532 for your drill bit, I recommend just starting a little smaller just to be safe because you can always start smaller and then go bigger. I'm going to start with an even smaller drill bit just to be safe. This can also just help your wood not to split by starting with a smaller hole. I'm starting with a one-eighth inch. So first, let's start nice and gentle with our nob holes. Place it right where you want it. Make sure your drill is going the right way and we're just going to go nice and slow, and I'm just pressing We made it. Since I drilled my first hole, I'm just going to make sure that the size I was thinking, yeah. I started smaller, it is too small so now that I know and I'm sure I'm just going to switch to the right size drill bit. So those fit, now we're going to flip it and add our legs. As you can see, this cabinet already has wheels, so I'm going to take them off and then use some of those markings to put the legs right back onto the same spot. So first, I'm unscrewing the legs with a simple screwdriver. We could save these if you want to put wheels on something some time. These legs came with these screws that are pretty long and I think they're going to go through this bottom shelf. I'm actually just going to use the same screws that were already in the cabinet to put on the leg. Let's mark where we want our legs to go. Same as with the hardware, there's no exact rule of where legs go. You want it to be something that makes sense, something that's symmetrical, and something that's far enough out so that the cabinet is not going to fall over. I'm going to use the holes that are already here just to keep it easier and then mark the other holes that we need to drill, since this plate is a little bit wider. We have our holes marked. I think I'm going to go slightly smaller on the drill bit just because once you go too big, then you can't go back the other way. Let's just test that out, since we have four holes, before we go any further. You could put these in with a drill if you want to speed up the process. I don't know, I'm just holding my screwdrivers so I just never bother. We can drill all the other holes now. I'm going to put all the legs on now while it's not painted, first so that I don't have to be flipping it upside down and possibly scratching the top before we paint it and also because the woods on my legs and handles don't match perfectly, so I'm going to paint this part and just leave the tip so that everything goes together as a unit. I think we're good to go, so let's flip it back over, so we can check the front hardware. So we got the legs on, as you can see, it makes so much difference. Now it's at a better high, you can use it as a TV console, a barker, whatever you want. The next step, if you're not painting it would be to put the hardware on. I'm not going to put these on yet because we're going to paint. We're going to get ready to paint our piece, so I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. Transforming with Paint: [MUSIC] Now we are going to totally transform this cabinet, using furniture paint. I recommend using a brand that is specifically for easy one-coat furniture painting. There's a bunch of different brands and they come in a bunch of different colors. You can search chalk paint, you can search milk paint, you can search furniture paint. You'll be able to read and tell that it's specifically for painting without having to do very much prep. I've been really inspired lately, like moody greens and how they look with the gold so that's why I picked this color. Also because I paint everything black and white, so I'm trying to step out of the box. Let's talk about prepping your piece. Basically, the things you can do to prep your piece are sand it and prime it. Sanding is not this really scary thing where you have to have a professional sander. You can literally just get sandpaper or a sanding block at any hardware store and all you're doing is scuffing up the surface so that the paint can easily attach to it. I don't think you're supposed to do this indoors, but I do this indoors and then just vacuum up after. [NOISE] You're just going to scuff it up and you can do as much or as little as you need to to make the paint stick. How you can know if the paint will stick is by testing out a little section. I like to pick a section that can't really be seen on the side or the back or the inside. For this type of piece, I've already used paint like this on it, so I know that we don't need a primer or sanding. The other things you might want to do to prep our tape off any areas that you don't want to get paint on. I actually want to try out a look of the legs being painted. I'm going to tape off the foot so that we don't get paint on it. If there's any parts on your cabinet that you don't want to get paint on, you'll just want to go ahead and tape it off beforehand. We're going to just tape it off. [NOISE] I'll just put some lower so that doesn't get too messed up. The next thing you want to do is just give it a good wipe-down. Make sure there's no dust and oils. You also want to make sure that the surface is smooth. If you have any weird holes or chips, you'll need to fill it in with wood filler beforehand. We're just dusting off our peace, making sure it's ready for paint. I usually use a paintbrush, but if you want it to go faster and a little bit smoother, you can use a little roller. Getting a bunch of paint on the roller, rolling some off so that it's not too thick. Oh my gosh, yes. I should use a roller because it goes on so smooth. I wouldn't go too thick. This is amazing. We might not even need the paintbrush really. When you're painting, it's pretty self-explanatory, but you want to make sure that you're going with the grain of the wood. Even if it's not a real piece, you basically just want to go with a way that makes sense with your piece, like you're not doing just totally random patterns. I love to paint like this. I actually painted my entire bathroom, my cabinet, and my bathroom mirror using paint like this without priming. It's lasted for over two years. We're going to get one full coat on first. You can just go off your piece for how many coats you need. Most things need two coats. If it's a really glossy IKEA piece or a really weird color, you might need three. For drying time on your coats, you want to make sure that the paint is dry before you do a second coat. Every paint is a little bit different, so I would just read whatever is on the bottle. I'm going to go in with the paintbrush and get some of the details that I can't get with a roller. Probably I should do that first and then go over with the roller a little bit. Let's see. Actually [NOISE] I should have opened these first. I'm just going to do some of the details and then we'll go back over with the roller. If I was really being really conscientious, I probably would have taken the doors off beforehand. I just didn't want to [LAUGHTER] so I'm just going to paint around it. I'm just trying to get the details that we can get with the roller. I might need to sand these legs. Let's just take a look and see how actually it's totally sticking. I'm not going to sand. Also because things like this don't get touched, so it doesn't matter if they're as durable as the top for example. Usually, I'm doing this right in my own apartment. You can just throw down a tarp or a mat and then just be careful not to flick too much so you don't get it on your other pieces of furniture. I'm just being careful to get in all the nooks and crannies, painting smooth lines. Make sure there aren't any parts that are clumping where there's way too much paint. I'm just focusing on getting the edges and then I'll go back the whole thing with a roller. Getting a little part of this front since it's going to show. [NOISE] This paint is so nice. You'll feel when you're putting your paint on if it's sticking or if it's just sloshing around. If it's sloshing around, that's when you know, oh, I need to prime or sand. This is going on so nice. [NOISE] Now I'm sold. The roller makes it really a lot more of a professional finish, without the brushstrokes. I guess I'm a roller down now [LAUGHTER]. You don't need too much paint. It goes pretty far. I think this was like $25 and it will probably get us through more than enough for the whole thing. I'm going to go away and finish painting this, getting it in every part that I want to. I'm not painting this because we'll be doing contact paper on it. I'll do one full coat, wait for it to dry, come back and do a second coat, wait for that to dry. If your piece is going to be heavily used, something like a dresser or an entryway console, anything where it's going to be touched and things are going to be moved around on it, you'll definitely want to do a top coat, tape off any areas that you don't want to paint. Then you're going to grab your paintbrush or your roller, go to town on it. Wait for it to dry. Do a top coat if you want [MUSIC] and we'll see you in the next lesson for the finishing touches. 7. Adding Finishing Touches: In this lesson, we're going to be putting the final finishing touches on our cabinet. We just painted it, I let it dry, and then paint a second coat over it. I also did a little bit of a finishing wax. I would definitely recommend doing a top coat on any of the surfaces that are going to be touched. We painted our cabinet and did a little bit of a top coat. I removed the tape from the legs and they're looking really cute, screwed in our knobs and screwed in this handle. So time to just put the final screw in. Remember if your screws are too long and they're not tightening all the way, you can add some little washers in the back so that it will be tightly on. But ours seemed to be a good length, and there. We have our hardware on. Let's talk a little bit about troubleshooting because chances are, no matter how much you prep something is going to come up with your project. Some issues that came up for me during this project, when I was screwing the legs in, I accidentally went all the way through. I only meant to go a little bit through. As you can see, I have these little tiny holes where I drilled through. It's not technically right, but it's really not going to make a difference when we're using the cabinet. I also was not realizing that the paint would be rubbed as the doors open and close. So I would want to put a really good top coat on this bottom section so that it's durable as the doors go in and out. As you can see, even though I did some things wrong, it's basically completely unrecognizable. Now we're going to put the final finishing touch on it, which is our contact paper. Contact paper is a really easy and fast way to transform a surface without having to know any technical skills, and it's also reversible. If you're renting and need to put it on a wall or need to remove it later, you can peel it off. It also comes in tons of different colors and styles. I picked a mat marble because I'm trying to create a full marble slab right here. When you're applying contact paper, the first thing you want to do is measure and figure out exactly where you want the paper to go. Let's first measure how wide it is. Mine's 28 and a quarter wide and 16 deep, but I want to make sure that I leave extra so that I can get this bottom part. In this case, my contact paper is going to be big enough so I don't have to line up seams. If you're doing a really big surface, you'll have to do separate pieces and you'll just want to look at the patterns so that it can match up. There's also two ways that you can finish off the edges. You can fold it over so that it's hidden or you can trim so that it's an exact line on the end. You can do this with scissors. I'm going to use an Exacto knife just for speed. I'm putting the cutting board down. You can also do this on cardboard if you're at home. Let's really try to get a straight line here. Let's make sure it's nice and straight. I'm following these lines. They have a nice grid mark right where I need it. Right there. That's the grid mark. I'm just going to remind myself that that's it, and then we'll measure a line. I'm going to try to be really careful here. Twenty-eight and a quarter, and then let's make sure I would err on the side of too long because we can trim. But if it's not long enough, we will have to start over. Let's hope. Let's check this out before we put it on, see how we did on the width. Mine is pretty straight, and the good news is this stuff is really cheap. So you can buy a whole roll and mess up as many times as you want to. I'm going to line mine up at the back and then fold it over. You can try this by yourself. My cabinet has this gap, so it's hard to reach. So I'm going to grab a buddy and have them hopefully help me hold it. I'm going to peel off just this side and get it stuck down and then slowly spread out the rest. You want to peel off your side, your corner. Great. Just peel off a little bit. Now we want to be really careful here. Pull it taut, so pull with me. Yeah, there we go. Let's try to line it up before we stick. Yes, I think we got it. Perfect. Thank you. You're good. Thank you. We got it down. Now I'm going to just slowly remove this and press down as I go. I'm trying not to get air bubbles. I'm going to drag this down, making sure there's no air bubbles, and I'm just going to slowly stick this on. Let me just make sure it's staying taut. If you do get air bubbles here, you can rub them out after. If you get a big one, you can also ***** it with a needle. This is going well. You can get glossy or matte contact paper. So I picked out matte so that it would look more realistically like marble. Moment of truth, we're going to see how we did on the other side. I have a little bit of extra which is okay. I'm going to trim that with an Exacto knife. The rest is really smooth. That's awesome. Just folding over this back end because I'm not going to see this. We might trim that. I'm going to be really careful trying not to scratch up the paint. Put just a light cut in the corner. Let's try this front edge. First, I'm just going to pull it and press it down, and then I'm going to trim the edge. I'm just pulling it taut, trying to make sure it's smooth before I stick it down. This is where you can decide if you want to fold over or trim. Since I didn't take my doors off, I'm going to try trimming. If you're having trouble with something sticking, just really take it and rub it down to get all of the air out to create a crease for your corner. Let's just try to do our final edge. Looking back, it probably would have been easier to take my doors off, but I was feeling lazy. Great. Let's make sure that edge is really stuck down in the corner. I'm going to just trim a tiny part of this so I can make sure it's totally stuck down. That's how it's stuck down. Let's do the same on the other side. That's stuck down. I'm just trimming this corner. That worked. I just took a step back and looked at this whole thing for the first time, and it is crazy. If you think back to how the cabinet looked beforehand, it's just completely unrecognizable and we didn't do anything crazy to change it. I mean, it took a little bit of time and a little bit of figuring out. I hope you see that it's something you can do and that it will completely transform any piece. I hope you are excited to just find something and dive in and see what you can transform. 8. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] There you have it. Can you even remember what the cabinet looked like a couple of hours ago? I hope that I've been able to show you just how easy it can be to transform your own furniture and that you're itching to get out there and start searching the sidewalks, thrift stores, or tackle that project that you've been putting off. Thank you for taking my class. I cannot wait to see photos of what you make in the project gallery and I hope you join me again for more hints and tips for transforming your trash into treasure.