Upcycling: Refinishing Thrifted Furniture

In 2020, waste landfills were responsible for 23.9% of Canada’s methane emissions, so rather than have these secondhand items end up in a landfill, upcycling is a great way to give these items a second chance to serve a purpose. Luckily for this stunning vintage hutch (probably not haunted), The Mash was on a mission to find some furniture we could gussy up for our festival set-up.

Recently The Mash participated in the ABF Edmonton Craft Beer Festival, it was wild! Our pizza is made from leftover spent grain from brewing craft beer at Half Hitch Brewing Company in Cochrane, Alberta. Our Dill Pickle & Bacon pizza is a big seller and really shined at ABF – BUT, we felt our booth was lacking. As much as we love that our delicious product speaks for itself, we wanted our festival presence to represent our mission at The Mash further, AND we needed more storage for supplies.

Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji are excellent tools for finding preloved furniture on a budget, especially when they’re listed as FREE. We found this stunning hutch that was converted into a birdcage. Unfortunately, it never fulfilled its purpose as a birdcage, but it was perfect for the project we had in mind. Even though it was never used to house birds, we gave this hutch a good clean before giving it a Facelift.

When it came to deciding on a colour, we knew

we wanted something bold that would give our festival set up a big pop of colour. In our restaurants, we have a bright neon sign that reads “SLICE SLICE BABY” in a striking pink colour, which we thought would be perfect if we found something similar to paint the hutch. We called the hardware store to place an order for the bright fuschia colour we found online called “HOT LIPS”, and then sent our construction crew to pick it up.

The hutch came already equipped with stunning hardware, so we started by removing them to make painting easier. While we recommend sanding and priming any thrifted furniture you are refinishing, we were in a bit of a time crunch and needed to slap on the colour in time for the Grape Escape festival in Calgary. If you’re going to cut corners and skip the primer as we did, be prepared to need several coats to accomplish a solid colour.

Overall, we couldn’t be happier with the result of our flipped vintage hutch. It’s one-of-a-kind, functional, and it’s allowed this hutch to thrive once again! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter below to keep up-to-date with our upcycling adventures and for some delicious pizza & craft beer offers!