My curbside find

This is my curbside find.  Philly has this great tradition of of putting your junk on the curb before garbage day.  The garbage man will take anything, so if no one picks it up, then it at least gets hauled away the next day.  Many wonderful finds are on the curbs of Philly!  So, I saw this gem and immediately fell in love with it, it has fantastic lines.  Better yet, it was on my own street.  I grabbed my neighbor Amee and made her help me haul it back to my house.  I forgot to take a 'before' pic before I took it apart.

The 'work zone'

This was quite the project!  My wonderful neighbor, Krista, helped me do it-- so so grateful for her help!  First we primed it.  Gave it a couple coats of Behr 'Mongolia Blossom' white.  Sanded the last coat of paint with a 320 grade sandpaper to give it a nice smooth finish.  It was looking so great.  After advice from the web and Home Depot, we gave it a top coat of polyurethane.  BIG mistake!  It turned it yellow!  It was horrible.  NEVER top a white paint with polyurethane!  I wanted to cry.

yellowed polyurethane

 So, we got to start over!  We knew what we were doing the second time through so we were able to do it in one day.  We gave it a light sanding so the primer had something to stick to again.  Primed it, painted it, sanded it again.  And debated and debated about what to do about a top coat.  We tested Poly-acrylic out, made sure it was safe before we put it on the whole thing.  I love the Poly-acrylic!  So much better.

And the finished project.  I love the look and love the extra storage in my dining room.  I'm in love!