Thrifting For My Living Room Makeover + HAUL | DIY Furniture and Decor Flips

Hello creative friends, I'm Anastasia and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I'm bringing you along as I thrift for furniture and decor for my living room makeover. I'm looking for a new coffee table, frames for a gallery wall, and other decorative touches. I'll also be giving a few of my finds a DIY refresh to make them work perfectly in the space. Let's go! I'm visiting a couple of thrift stores over a few days, including a thrift mall that I've And while I'm out, I love the feeling of knowing that my home is protected with home security from TAPO by TP-Link. Whether it's keeping an eye on things indoors with their smart cameras, or outdoors with their security solutions, TAPO by TP-Link has it all. We installed both the outdoor floodlight camera and doorbell camera ourselves. I know y'all are DIYers like me and anyone can easily DIY this setup in just a few minutes with no electrician required. The best part is it's super affordable and available at Walmart, both in-store and online. Because a safe and secure home should be available to everyone, no matter their budget. The TAPO mobile app allows us to view live feed from the cameras and easily change settings like motion detecting and night vision. The doorbell even has different sounds you can choose from, including jingle bells, which will be so much fun for around the holidays. We invest so much into our homes, so it would only make sense that we invest into keeping them safe. If you've been thinking about upgrading your home security, check out these products at Walmart by clicking the link in my description box. Thank you TAPO by TP-Link for sponsoring today's video. Now let's head into some thrift stores. So as you know, the goal for today's trip is to find furniture and decor for my upcoming living room makeover. So I'll mostly be looking for larger items like furniture, frames, and lamps, but I'm also keeping my eyes open for smaller special pieces of decor. I loved the turned wood legs of these end tables and they were $100 for both and I would definitely refinish them if it were me, but I already have some side tables so I just didn't need these. This was a really cool entertainment center with a built-in record player and radio for $200. So I already have most of the larger furniture for my living room like a couch, side chairs, and two side tables that I'm going to be getting soon, but the main thing I still need is a coffee table. I've been searching for months and still have not found the perfect one. This square coffee table was nice and only $19.99, but would just be too big for my living room. And this one kind of reminded me of a boat for some reason. It was priced at $45.99 and it's definitely one of the more unique coffee tables I've seen. I happened to be visiting Scottsboro for a day, so I decided to visit a thrift store there and came across CC's Corner Thrift Mall and this place was absolutely huge. I actually got lost a few times because it was kind of a maze in there. The booths were very organized but also had so much stuff and it was all at really surprisingly low prices. As I was making my way around the store, I didn't expect to come across a large furniture section in the very back and I just so happened to find the perfect coffee table. And to add icing on the cake, it was only $20 and this thing is solid wood and very heavy. It's going to make the perfect piece for my living room and I'm going to be doing a thrift flip on it in this video, so keep watching to see me transform it. I really thought I struck gold, no pun intended, when I saw these gold sconces and I was even more excited to see that they were only $6 for both but then I realized that they were plastic, unfortunately, so I left them behind but I was so sad. This really old china cabinet was gorgeous but to me it looks more like it's for a dining room rather than a living room and I don't have room in my dining room for this. It kind of smelled bad too but I couldn't get over these little carved flowers, just so pretty. I saw this lamp and thought it definitely had potential. $20 is more than I'd usually pay for a lamp that needs to be DIY'd but it is a larger size and it came with a brand new lampshade which saved me from having to buy one, so I'll be doing a makeover on this lamp in this video, so stay tuned to see how it turns out. I have this vision of a large gallery wall in my living room so I've been on the hunt for frames that are unique but cohesive so I did grab a few and I'll share those with you in my haul. So I picked up a couple of things while out thrift shopping and I just wanted to show y'all the items that I brought home. So this cute little stoneware bowl was $1.50 and I love picking up bowls like this because they are so practical and I just loved the rich color of this one and I happened to find one that looked similar to it at a different store so I also grabbed this cute little jar and I love the color of this one as well. They're very close to each other. This one was $2.50. I also grabbed this beautiful wood carved picture frame for only 99 cents and I loved the design on it. I also thought the color of it was pretty but I may, depending on where I end up styling it, I may do a darker paint wash or gel stain over top just to darken the wood a little bit because it is a little bit orange. I also grabbed this beautiful mirror. It's got gorgeous detailing around it and even though the gold could definitely use some rub and buff to make it a little less shiny and yellow, I think it's beautiful. It can be hung up in an entryway but it could also be set on the coffee table or any surface to kind of be a styling element as well to layer some other decor on top of. I love this gorgeous and detailed vintage glass dish. I saw this and loved the wavy detail around the edges. I loved all the different patterns happening in the glass. It's just got a lot going on and I love it as a sculptural piece. I immediately pictured this on a coffee table with maybe a candle sitting in it or to be set on a bathroom vanity to put your jewelry in. This one was only $3. I also found these frames at two different thrift stores and I'm so happy with them. The smaller one is very detailed around the frame and it kind of matches a bigger one that I have. It was only $4 and I could not believe that price for this size. It's about two feet by one and a half feet and then this larger beautiful frame is so pretty on the corners. It's so detailed. This one was $15 and it is pretty large. My plan for the living room is to do a big gallery wall above the couch so of course I'll also be changing the artwork out to something that's more cohesive. So I really love my mantle as inspiration for my coffee table because I love that it's this rich dark tone and you can see that it's got lots of warmth in it. Kind of that reddish orange undertone but then it has this darkness on top of it. Just a very rich dark brown. Just like Hazel. Hi Hazel. So we are going for Hazel colored. So I really think that that color is very achievable on this coffee table because it already has that orangey red finish on it. And so we're just going to go over that with a darker gel stain. This is definitely going to need a really good scuff sanding and it is just covered in lots of scratches. Some of them are pretty deep like this one and this one. So that is interesting. I didn't notice this before obviously because I've never flipped it upside down but is that termites or water damage? Wow it's really soft. If it is termites why would they only be in the feet when I don't see that anywhere else? What started out as a fun little DIY project I thought has turned into learning a lot about termites. So we've got all of the legs off now and this one was the worst one. This one was the one where the leg looked like this. So super bad. And it's actually so bad that the termites went all the way through the leg. Oh my gosh you can see straight through it and up into the table itself. And so you can see a little bit of damage there. So my plan is to take some rubbing alcohol in a syringe and squirt it into the termite holes and hopefully it starts coming out of the other holes. That's how we know it's traveling through their tunnels to make sure that anything that could be in there is definitely dead. So no live termites were found. We think this is an old problem. So as of this point we have taken the preventative measures. I'm going to get new feet for the table and we're good to proceed. So the next thing I'm going to do is use this crud cutter gloss off which is going to degrease the surface and also kind of act as a liquid sandpaper. It's going to prep the surface by deglossing any finish that's on it, kind of taking off that top layer so that the gel stain can stick better. I just wanted to say here to please thoroughly check your wood pieces before bringing them home from the thrift store. Luckily this was a very minor and old termite issue with no termites remaining but I've learned how important it is now to inspect your pieces before bringing them inside your home. The rubbing alcohol method is only for very minor cases so if you find termites in your furniture please do thorough research to find the best solution for your situation. For the gel stain I'm using Farithane's Kona color because I've seen lots of furniture flippers use this color and I love it every single time so I've been itching to try it out myself. The Kona is darker than I expected it to be but I suppose it depends on how dark the surface is that you're starting with. And I also had to put a thick coat of it on to hide the imperfections on this table so it came out darker than expected but I'm kind of loving it. I decided to go with Varithane's water-based matte polyurethane as a top coat but as if the table hasn't tormented me enough with the termite scare this top coat would not dry clear and left this milky white haze and a powdery residue which makes me think it wasn't adhering well. But according to the gel stain you can use water-based poly on top so my only guess is that the gel stain may have had trouble adhering to the existing finish on the table which kind of led to a domino effect. So we're going to wipe it down and then re-sand the bottom to try to get off that clear coat and then I got this polyurethane oil-based so it won't be milky white. Home Depot did not have a normal polyurethane they just had spar urethane which is basically the same thing but for exterior. I ordered these new bun feet from Amazon and I expected to refinish them to match the coffee table but they actually are a 98% perfect match so I got so lucky with that. Finally this coffee table saga comes to a happy ending and I love it. It was definitely a happy accident that it came out darker than I planned because I think it looks fantastic. Now it's time to DIY this large lamp. As you can see the existing finish isn't doing too hot and it needs a redo. After cleaning it up I'm giving it a base coat with matte clamshell spray paint. Once that's dry I'm mixing my patching plaster with a little bit of khaki acrylic paint as well as some baking soda and you probably know by now that my favorite way to apply this is with my hand while wearing a glove and I want the design to have horizontal lines so I'm using my fingers to create that pattern. Once it's dry I'm sanding down the peaks so there's no harsh texture. I then started applying white and beige paint and I got about this far before I realized it was just a little too plain so I decided to paint it with some leftover ethereal mood by Sherwin-Williams and I painted the metal hardware brown. To achieve a glazed ceramic look I'm top coating it with this Krylon clear glaze. Lastly I'm using antique gold rub and buff to refinish the finial and other metal parts. It's the perfect scale for my media console in my living room so I styled it here with a few other thrifted items. I feel like we've got a really good start on the furniture and decor for the living room so I've got a lot of work to do now as far as designing and planning the space out. Make sure you are subscribed to my channel so you don't miss my upcoming room makeovers and thrifting content. I hope you enjoyed this video and thank you so very much for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Bye guys!