Cheap Furniture make-over (with some painting tips)!!

Sometimes I wonder if when my husband is finished with medical school and we are FOR THE FIRST TIME making a decent amount of money, will I still be repainting thrifted furniture? Or will I just buy some new stuff? I tend to think it will be a mixture of both. I really love making the decor in my home. It's a way to create and express myself artistically even if I am not currently working on my fine art (paintings, etc). Anyway, long intro but here are my 2 latest re-dos!

BEFORE: $20 sideboard with hutch on top (wood covered in veneer).

1.Lots of taping (making SURE I got perfect little diamond points)
2. seal tape with clear polyurethane to prevent leaks under the tape!  (a little tip I learned from some furniture blog a few months ago!!!-best tip ever)
3. primed
4. painted and peeled tape while still wet. (Though since there were other dried coats underneath I still ripped paint off in a few spots. If you can take the tape off before the 4th layer then you have more luck and this usually doesn't happen:) )

AFTER!!!! I LOVE this thing. I still haven't unpacked all my books or display-type things, so it remains empty, but I love it even just like that!

BEFORE (well we are going to pretend since I really didn't take a shot of it before...) $5:

1. taped around the top circular veneer part
2. FORGOT to seal the edges of the tape, and painted 2 layers of Behr paint and prime in white.
3. taped off a bunch of stripes
4. SEALED THE TAPE WITH THE SAME WHITE PAINT.
5. painted the aqua color and immediately took off the tape
6. painted a layer of polyurethane b/c the original paint was flat.

ewwww! I  LOVE it!!!!

AFTER! yay! To do these two projects all I bought were the sample sizes of white and aqua ( and I actually painted a third piece as well with the same paint). The samples only cost $2.50 each, but since they only come in "flat" I had to polyurethane over top (I already had some). So for 3 pieces of furniture I only spent $5 on paint, and $27 (including the 3rd piece not shown) on furniture! That works VERY well into our student budget!!