I’m not much of a DIY person and I’m certainly not a painter.  I’m a DIY WannaBe, but the reality is that I’m more of a poster child for Pinterest fail ads.  I’m impatient.  I like projects you can start and finish within a couple of hours.  Well, my daughter decided she wanted a china cabinet redone to go into her bedroom.  She wanted to display her vintage camera collection and some other treasures in it.  She needed a large cabinet but large curio cabinets are so expensive!  We opted to buy a china cabinet from a friend.  She recently sold her home.  She needed to sell it and we got a good deal on it.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living - Collage Created in Picmonkey.

DIY China Cabinet Makeover

It started out as a stained oak china cabinet.  Here it is pictured in my friend’s home.

 

 I followed a few simple instructions to get the look I wanted.

1. Take all the doors off the cabinet.
2. Take all the hardware off.  Remove all the handles, hinges, and screws.
3. Sand the cabinet.

If you want to try a project similar to this one, don’t let the sanding part wear you out.  You don’t need to go overboard with the sanding.  Just sand over it lightly once.  You don’t need to spend all day on this.

4.  Apply a layer of primer.

Most finished china cabinets like this one have a layer of varnish over the stain.  After sanding it, you’ll need to apply a layer of primer. 

5.  Apply two coats of paint.

Chalk paint is a popular option for a project like this one.  However, we had just added crown molding to my daughter’s room.  She loved the look and she wanted her cabinet to match her newly painted trim.  We had almost an entire gallon of interior white trim paint so we used it.  It is a semi-gloss paint.  It worked great and we love the finished product.

We were going to paint the inside but after we brought the cabinet home, we realized that the shelving is not removable.  You can’t see it in the picture, but there is glass on each side of the cabinet.  The wood shelving almost touches the glass.  There is no way I could paint the sides of the shelving.  We thought it would look odd to look inside the side of the cabinet to see white shelves without painting the sides white also.  It’s kind of hard to explain without showing you in person, but hopefully you’re understanding the dilemma.  We thought about painting the back inside of the cabinet gray or applying a wallpaper, but after finishing the outside, we decided we liked leaving the inside shelves to their natural charm.  We LOVE it.  My daughter has placed her treasures inside the cabinet and it looks amazing in her room.

PIN ME!