Side Table/Media Table

Hi! What with getting married and starting up a new season of ultimate frisbee, I have been neglecting this blog. So I have some past work to show you!
My friend Whitney recently moved to a small apartment in San Francisco and invited me over to give her some feedback about design. Her living space and bedroom are in one room of the apartment. One of the conundrums was her media center. She has a small TV in the corner of the sitting area on a black bookshelf. The black shelf was too large for the corner and on top of that, it was just too much black, making the corner of the room feel heavy.

I'm usually never a fan of black media cabinets or tables. With the black TV, black cable box, black DVD player, on top of black, it's just too much. I'd rather try to hide the fact that you have electronics in the room, drawing your eye to interesting furniture or art displayed on the wall. So, to help solve Whitney's media conundrum(I'm liking that word right now), I went hunting for a small side table that could be used as a media table. Here's what I found of craigslist for about $15.

Clearly it wasn't the most attractive piece, but it was the right dimensions and had the exposed shelving below, which was perfect for a media center. I started by using wood putty to fill in the divots around the shelves, which were there from previous doors that must have been on the piece. Then I removed the cheap drawer pull and sanded the drawer to see if the wood would be worth staining.

Whitney had mentioned that she liked my previous dresser that I stained in in a chevron pattern, so I used that as my inspiration:

I measured my design and drew it with pencil, and debated and debated whether it looked right. Then I decided to just go for it and stained the parts that I wanted dark with my favorite dark walnut stain. Happy with the result, I painted a coat of Miniwax's Polycrylic Protective Finish over the drawer. I also decided to sand the shelf and leave it in its natural wood tone.
For the rest of the piece, I wanted to keep it light, so I used Annie Sloan's Pure White chalk paint. But that stubborn red paint kept bleeding through, so I spray painted the entire piece with Rust-oleum's semi-gloss White(primer and paint in one). Though one of the benefits of chalk paint is no priming, in the future I would first prime if I'm painting over such a vibrant color (then I wouldn't have to use so much of the chalk paint to get a nice coat). For the final step, I bought a simple mid-century style drawer pull and spray painted it gold. Here are some styled shots I took before bringing the piece to Whitney:

I may have overdid it with the styling, but you get the picture. Then I drove over to Whitney's for the reveal! I was I bit nervous, but she was very happy with the piece and after I saw it in the space, I was very happy with it too. The white helps lighten the room and the drawer detailing adds a bit of snazz!