The great repaint of '08

Some of you might know that I am quite the repainter. I will take any old thing and repaint it to match my current decor. I do this mostly out of cheapness. Rather than buy new I just layer my belonging with various colors of paint. For example, my end table (pictured above) was one that John "stole" from his parents basement. It was one of those old dark oak end tables with really gaudy fronts and knobs. I took it, put on a flat door, a new handle, painted it, and called it good. You'd think by this point in my life I would maybe go out and buy a new end table, not me. I have now painted that table 2 more times (once for a change of color, and most recently to touch up and add a protective coat).

I have also repainted candles to make them match my decor. While I made them look quite ugly when I first painted them, I experimented with the polyurethane that I put on my table and, FYI: you can repaint candles with craft paint and a layer of polyurethane and they will look awesome...on a plant shelf. I have repainted Ainsley's hand me down dresser and shelf twice, and Owen's dresser once. I have also spray painted my fair share of frames (pictured above) and my living room lamps (also pictured above) more than once. What can I say, I'm crazy, cheap, and obsessive...I'm a real treasure! So this past week I spent some quality time in the garage repainting everything that I've wanted to get painted for a while. But, the whole point of this post, is that for the first time in my life I repainted something and made it AWESOME!!! I was given this old mirror (our house is the third in our ward that has been graced with it's presence). So here is the before picture (the left side and the bottom had already been sanded before I thought to take a picture). Not that the mirror was that bad before, just dinged up and in colors that wouldn't match my house at all.

There were 2 gaps that had to be fixed. I fixed one with shear force and a hammer, and I fixed the other one with caulk. If I had paid a penny for the mirror I would have been a little more hesitant about my methods, but it was free...so there was nothing to lose (except maybe the $10 I spent on supplies).

And here is the after!
Isn't it the most beautiful $10 mirror you've ever seen? Well worth the sore, scratched, painted hands that I am now sporting!