China Cabinet

A couple of weeks ago I decided {on a whim} to make over my grandfather's china cabinet. This was given to me by my parents shortly after we bought our house. I hesitated to refinish it, just because it has been such a sentimental piece to our family. Even 15 years after my grandfather's passing, I swear that when you open those cabinet doors, you can still smell the scent of his house. It's crazy how scents can take you back in time in an instant. I thought the wood finish on this piece was pretty, but just not my style. It had lots of orange undertones in the wood, and I just don't do orange wood. If you can't tell by looking at my Pinterest boards, I am very much into shabby, farmhouse pieces.

here is a peek into the other side of our dining room

This china cabinet just needed for interest for me. I started this project at 7:00 on a Saturday morning, thinking I could just "knock it out" by lunch time. My over-eager self was sorely disappointed when at 8pm that night I was still working on it. But, I am so happy that I spent that time working on this. It fits in perfectly :)

Here are a few shots of the cabinet before:

To refinish a piece like this you'll need:
-Chalk Paint: I used Farmhouse brand, which can be found at Olive Branch Boutique
-Rustoleum Decorative Glaze in Java, and damp paper towels or old wash cloth
-Sand paper
-Spray Paint

I started first by taking off all the doors, removing hardware, using painter's tape to tape off windows and of course cleaning out all of my china to prep the area for paint. Prep work always takes the longest. Here's a peek into how messing re-doing furniture can be. This is real life, people.

Then, I started painting the body of the china cabinet with chalk paint. What I have really grown to love about this paint is that you seriously DO NOT need to sand before painting. You apply it directly to your piece and it adheres great. Such a time saver. Also, a small quart of paint painted this entire cabinet plus my mantle I have been working on. It costs about $33.00 for the quart, but lasts a long time.

Painting the body of the cabinet took the longest. For all of the detail work I used a small paintbrush to make sure I got into each crevice. I then took all of the doors into the garage, and painted them. This cabinet took 3 coats of paint total. It's also very important that you let it dry in between each coat.

 

In between all of those coats of paint drying, I took all of my gold hardware that was there previously and spray painted it with a matte black. Once paint was dry on the cabinet, I took my Rustoleum decorative glaze and worked in small areas, applied with a small paint brush, and then immediately wiped off the glaze with a damp paper towel. This glaze got into all the crevices to give it a distressed look. Once that dried, I used sandpaper to distress it even more. This also gives the chalk paint a nice finish. Chalk paint already dries SO smooth, but sanding it really helps give it a little sheen. 

Make sure to work in small areas when using Rustoleum glaze.

detailed picture after using Rustoleum and sanding.

Once all of the distressing was done, and dried. We cleaned the windows with Windex and a straight razor to get excess paint off, reattached hardware, and added doors back to cabinet.

love the sweet details of a little boxwood wreath

 

Hope you enjoyed! :) Happy Wednesday.