Kicked-to-the-Curb Buffet Makeover for Under $5

My oldest daughter is due with her third baby in a few weeks, and she is nesting HARDCORE! This basically means all the things are getting painted and made over…including this awesome buffet that she scored for FREE from someone that was kicking it to the curb!

Shoutout to my son-in-law for the crouching photo bomb.

Hard to believe anyone would give this away for free. Apparently not everyone knows about the magic of chalk paint, which means all kinds of winning for those of us who do!

Kacey knew exactly what she wanted to do with this piece, and we were able to complete it in an afternoon. The beauty of a true chalk paint is that it is safe to paint with while pregnant. This is NOT the case with the DIY “recipes!” That’s why we always use BB Frösch–it’s all natural minerals that don’t cause any toxic chemical reactions when added to paint.

Here’s what was involved:

• Leftover paint from a bunkbed project—we used Behr “White Metal,” which is the perfect shade of light grey. We mixed up one 8 oz. squeeze bottle of paint, and that’s all it took! I love mixing paint into squeeze bottles and just squirting the paint on my piece–it makes for nice, clean painting.
• BB Frösch Chalk Paint Powder to make our own chalk paint. We only mixed one cup of paint, so we only used 2 Tablespoons of powder. Yay for affordable chalk paint!
• BB Frösch Dark Premium Finishing Wax
• BB Frösch Clear Premium Finishing Wax
• 220 Grit Sandpaper (not pictured)

Before painting, we opted to sand through the existing finish on the top of the buffet only because it had a beautiful grain that we wanted to highlight.

This only took a few minutes with a palm sander. 

Once the top was sanded, while Blaire played in the shelves, we painted the rest of the dresser with the paint we had already mixed up. 

Since we were using chalk paint, we didn’t have to strip or sand the dresser first—we just cleaned it and started painting. 

It took two coats and less than a cup of paint. I LOVE the coverage I get when I mix BB Frösch into my paint! We did a little distressing with 220 grit sandpaper to highlight the details.

We used BB Frösch Clear Premium Finishing Wax to seal the paint, which took about 30 minutes.

For the top, we decided to simply dark wax the raw wood, and I LOVE the way it turned out! BB Frösch Dark Wax can be used to seal paint, but it can also be used to protect raw wood. It gives a really rich tone that brought out all the gorgeous grain as well as a little shine.

This was one of the cheapest and quickest makeovers we’ve ever done considering the buffet was free, and we used leftover paint. Cheap and free are my favorite kind of projects! 

I wonder if the people that kicked this buffet to the curb are kicking themselves now that it’s all made over…

Find more affordable chalk paint inspiration at bbfrosch.com. Follow BB Frösch on Instagram,  Pinterest and Facebook.