My hubby and I love to flip furniture together. One of our favorite things is to find a piece of broken, discarded furniture on the side of the road and turn it into something beautiful and useful.

OLD MADE NEW. Restored.

It always reminds us of what Christ did for us on the cross: he took what was broken and useless in our lives and made us new…restored us to good standing with God. He made us beautiful and useful for the Kingdom.

I might sound crazy, but it’s the truth. Every time we flip a piece of furniture, we feel overwhelmingly grateful for Christ’s sacrifice for us. It’s a great reminder that we are nothing until he fixes us.

Ben found this gem on the side of the road and I wasn’t sure it had any potential. It was a wreck: broken drawers and doors, cigarette stains on the top, mouse droppings inside.

MEH.

But it was free and we needed a console in our living room to store toys and hold a TV. We have a small house, so we are constantly rearranging things to fit the needs of our growing family. This time we were converting a dining room into a living room so that the boys had another play space. THE WINTERS GET SO LONG. If I had to spend another day in the basement (where there is one teeny, tiny window), I was going to go crazy.

Once he did a little a demo, I started to see… and then I remembered to take a “before” pic.

Quite the wreck, huh? We stood outside in the cold for a couple hours trying to figure out where to place shelves, how to keep true to the “style” of piece (a bit more modern than farmhouse if you look at the legs) and how to use scrap wood that we already had to make it happen.

By the end of the night, it looked like this:

Not bad, right?

And then we brought it inside, because it was too cold to paint outside. We do most of our work in the garage… not very fancy but it does the job. I’ve heard some people actually park cars in their garage space… we prefer old furniture, tools, and toys galore.

I started with white…because I always start with white paint. I love me some white paint.

Better! Now you couldn’t tell that we had pieced it together. But it still didn’t seem quite right. It was too much white…So I spent $10 on a quart of paint and went outside my comfort zone…

and loved it!

There it is! Simple, beautiful, and so useful. Those baskets hold a crazy amount of trucks, trains and tracks, puzzles, books and more. It’s awesome. And it cost $10 to build, plus the cost of baskets. They are from target and were a total splurge… but have been so worth it. It’s really nice at the end of the day to be able to put away the mess.

Have you flipped any furniture? I’d love to see pics! Feel free to email me at aminta@amintageisler.com