Gossip Bench Makeover

I've never really been super organized, and one thing I am especially bad at is dealing with is stuff that comes in the door with me- mail, jackets, shoes, you know. It's like it explodes off of me when I walk in and then I can't bring myself to pick it up. My new apartment has a strangely wide hallway, which has lead me to decide to buy an actual standing coat rack for the first time in my life, and that's been a game changer, but there are still purses and shoes all over the place. A few years ago I decided that part of becoming an adult is realizing that while you might not actually change these things, you can get a lot of mileage out of working around your weaknesses. Like, I just CAN'T bring myself to take my shoes all the way to the closet, but I CAN chuck them in a basket. So, the next to the door shoe basket was born. I just needed one more thing....

I found this on Craigslist while looking for some kind of bench. It's a "telephone bench" or "gossip bench". You're supposed to sit on it and chat with the phone sitting on the table. I suppose I could have put my cell phone on there but it might have been overkill.

This thing didn't just show up like this:

When I got it, it was cute, but there were these kind of cheesy looking flowers on the back, and a lot of the finish was wearing off, especially on the desk (due in no small part to historically enormous telephones, I'm sure).

It sat around like this for a few months, while I spent an insanity filled 6 weeks full of Thanksgiving and Christmas and 2 conferences. Then, I finally decided to take action. I bought some semi-gloss paint at Home Depot, upon recommendation of the extremely patient Home Depot man who didn't even roll his eyes when I got completely stymied by the approximately one million shades of light greyish blue paint available. I then sanded it lightly with very fine sandpaper, but didn't do any primer because he said I probably didn't need it. I thought the bench seat looked pretty good, so decided to leave that as is.

The hardest part, by FAR was dealing with the spindles. I had to wrap them all with blue tape and then construct an elaborate drop cloth out of taped together kitchen trash bags (these pictures are extra bad because I was covered in paint and it was night time)

 I love how it turned out, it's the perfect size for dumping things, and I can hide the shoe basket underneath. Plus, I like how it's kind of unique. PLUS, I had never heard of these things before and got to spend time getting all obsessed with finding other people's super cute telephone bench makeovers like this one  and this one  and this one. It's really about the most I could expect out of any one piece of furniture!