End Table - Easy Transformation

Our family "room" is in our nice but unfinished basement. It looks like the previous owner started to finish off the full basement space by adding framing (with nice 70s paneling) to make a small room, adding a brick fireplace, and adding a brick wall with full closets on the back side. But it still has concrete floors, concrete block exterior walls, and an open ceiling.
Here are pics from after we moved in:

Paneled school room behind loveseat

Brick fireplace

Open ceiling (but it's wood beams which is nice), random brick wall with closets on the back, painted cinder block exterior wall to the right

It works for the time being and let's the younglings have a place where they can flop on the couch or toss the throw pillows around. We do spend a lot of time in the space because our school room is also downstairs so I've been trying to make it a little less 'left-over hand-me-down garage sale' and a little more 'ikea/pottery barn industrial rustic'.
The two latest improvements have been to add castors to the bottom of a trunk which functions as our coffee table. We exercise and play Wii in the space and it was such a pain to move the trunk out of the way. Putting wheels on the bottom has made moving the trunk back and forth so much easier. And ensures that the trunk actually gets put back after a work-out session. (The trunk is a keeper for now because it's great guest linen storage.)

The other big change for the space is a set of new end tables. Our previous ones were a well-loved (and well-stickered) former child's nightstand in a strange shade of barn red and a assemble-yourself psuedo-wood thing in a non-matching cherry finish from Ames Department Store. (Yup, that old!)
They were okay, they were functional but they didn't really add anything to the space.

There's the Ames table next to the sofa.

I found  these two solid wood pieces at a local second-hand store and liked them immediately. Nice shape, nice size, overall good condition, a little bit of storage space, and a little bit of display space. Bonus---they were only $15 each!

Bass did the dirty work of removing the non-matching hardware and sanding them down. I painted 1 coat of primer and 3 top coats of Crumb Cookie (our trim paint for the whole house.)

I didn't want metal hardware so I bought new wooden knobs at Lowes for $0.87 each and painted them to match.

They fit perfectly and really brighten up the family room area. For very little expense, they were definitely a step in the right direction towards making this space a little more pulled together.

Linking up to these great blog parties:

Sunday: Sunday Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming;
Tuesday: One Project at a Time at A Bowl Full of Lemons; Tutes and Tips at Home Stories A to Z; Show Me What Ya Got at Not Just a Housewife;
Wednesday: Wicked Awesome Wednesday at Handy Man, Crafty Woman; It's Overflowing at Overflowing with Creativity; Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts;
Home Decor and Organizing at Organize and Decorate Everything;
Thursday: Delightfully Inspiring Thursday at Delightful Order; Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Creek Cottage;
Friday: Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest; Flaunt it Friday at Chic on a Shoestring;