Do you love before and afters the way I do? There's something deeply satisfying about them. I was raised on HGTV and TLC, which specialize in the trope, of course, but I think the thrill of a completed project - something actually crossed off the list - is something that a lot of people can relate to. In any event, I hope you do like before and afters, because we're awash with them this week.

I mentioned that we're spending the week at my parents, and there's nothing more fun than crafting at their house. They have space and power tools and spare paint galore. And even a supply of street-side-find furniture, because I come by that honestly. Like this diamond in the rough:

I think it was my sister who first spied this and managed to haul it home. It sat in my parents' garage awaiting a better home for a long time. In the course of its exile, it of course filled up with fishing and crabbing gear (normal), and paint and auto supplies. But even as it fully assumed its garage storage identity, I still saw its potential underneath. I loved the color, and the chunkiness of the shelves, and the staggered shelf heights. I was convinced it would make the perfect media cabinet. My parents had only this dinky side board for their TV. Here's a terrible shot I have only because I was trying to capture Lou teaching herself ballet with You Tube videos.

I'm sorry for the terrible photo. But you get the idea: that thing was so small! And out in the garage was this stunning, huge piece that fit the scale of their room. So I begged and pleaded for my dad and Bret to drag the thing inside and let me have my way with it. It's huge and solid and a total pain to move - especially when we did it, when there were feet of snow on the ground - but eventually, we got it here.

I practically rubbed my hands together and cackled with evil glee. First things first: We flipped it on its side. There was a lip going around the edge of the face of the cabinet, so in order to make it rest evenly on its side, we set it on its own cabinet doors (long removed). By luck, they were the exact depth of the lip, so they provied the perfect shims, and are hidden behind the lip itself. (I pulled it out for this shot).

Then, we painted the sides white. The sides were a bit beat up from living in the garage, and we thought the two-toned look would somehow make this look like a real media cabinet, and not some book shelf we'd turned on its side. I think it worked, and I really like the white sides.

From there was the fun part. After vacuuming out the cobwebs and scrubbing the whole thing down with Murphy's Oil Soap and some heavy duty wood polish, we got to have some fun. First up, we backed the shelving with two types of covering. The branch-y blue and gold number is from a roll of wallpaper I bought at Target (which I just typed Clearance, because that's how I think of that store) maybe, seriously, six years ago. I knew the perfect project would present itself, and long after my own tastes had evolved to exclude too much blue and gold wall paper, my mom loves the stuff, and it was perfect in here. We used gold and white faux bois wrapping paper from TJ Maxx for the remaining cubes.

We started out, as I always do, with regular transparent tape (like Scotch) to hold the papers up, and figure out which way we liked them best. We tried alternating cubes, blue on bottom and white on top, and landed with the current configuration: white on bottom, blue on top. I love it. My mom would prefer if the grain on the faux bois went the other way, but by the time we figured that out, we didn't have enough wrapping paper to do it the other way. Once we settled on our layout, I used plain old white school glue and a cheap plastic paint brush to evenly coat the backs with glue. Then I applied the paper and smoothed out bubbles with a credit card.

Then we filled it up with knick knacks, seeking out French provincial, chic country, and gold accented pieces. Luckily, my mom has a lot of those on hand, so we decorated the whole thing by shopping the house. My favorite touch is the empty gold frame - about $3 from the Christmas tree store and leftover from another project - in the bottom middle cube. But I like it all. I think we did a bang up job, and the only money we spent on the entire project was $3 for the roll of wrapping paper. Even that was used in other projects around the house, so I'm tempted to call this a completely free, upcycled masterpiece. If fits the scale of the family room so much better, and the designated little spot for the cable and DVD player just make the whole area seem less cluttered and more intentional. What do you think? Ever completed a no-cost makeover that changed a whole room? Inquiring minds want to know.

Thanks as always for reading!