Making something old new again

When I was younger, my grandmother and grandfather owned this lot next to their own house with this old house that was pretty much condemned. They had to have the house torn down because of the bad shape it was in (I would like to mention that they never lived in the house, and bought the property after it was in that terrible condition). It was really sad, cause the house was actually really beautiful. If I remember correctly, it was an older home, probably Victorian style, and painted lots of different colors. The front door was actually two doors, which as a kid I thought was really cool, and it was on an angle (so the front door was actually in the corner with a porch in front of it.) Before the house was torn down, my grandmother took us through the house. I vaguely remember how badly it looked, with stuff everywhere. The place wasn't salvageable. Anyway, the point of that story is that I managed to find one little gem inside the house that I asked to take with me, and my grandmother said yes.

What I found was a little white bathroom cabinet. It had potential, and even though I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I knew that I wanted to do something with it. So I took it home and began to try to clean it up. I was somewhere between 12 and 15 years old, I would guess, and obviously had never "cleaned up" a piece of furniture in my life, so I got stuck and abandoned the job. It sat in my parents garage for years, until I moved into my apartment two years ago and hauled it with me. I tried again to clean it up, but had a difficult time removing all the paint from the inside of the cabinet. So it sat again.


Getting the paint off the outside of the cabinet was simple!

When I moved into my house, I knew that the cabinet would be perfect in my bathroom (reason #1- it was free!) So I decided I was going to try again to fix it up and make it pretty again. I used scrapers, chemical stripper, tons of sandpaper, but still couldn't get it to look like I wanted! That old paint was stubborn!


The paint on the inside and the back was difficult to get off!

Then... I read this post from Young House Love, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

The first step of making my old cabinet look new again was to give it a fresh coat of crisp, white paint. I used Sherwin Williams Pro Classic in a semi gloss. The best part about this can of paint was that it was a "mis-tint," which means it only cost me $5 for a gallon of $40 paint! Score! (It only took me about 3 weekends to paint the cabinet, lol. Oil based paint takes much longer to dry than latex, but it holds up so much better!)



I didn't paint the back of the cabinet because I had big plans for it!


I told you I love fabric!

I finally got over my fear of the cabinet and took off the back, which made it much easier to mod podge the fabric to the back of the cabinet. I did a layer of mod podge, then laid the fabric over top of it. I let it dry a few hours, then did a layer of mod podge on top of the fabric to protect it from the elements. It's subject to a lot being in a bathroom!


I love the way it looks when you open the cabinet and find a beautiful surprise!

Of course, I didn't stop there! The inside of the door was equally difficult to remove paint, so I decided it needed the royal treatment too.


After a false start, I got over my fear of this part of the cabinet too and finally pulled the backing to the mirror off!


The mirror was only held in with a few nails... lol. I was so worried about breaking it too!

To put the fabric on the inside of the door, I followed the same steps I did with the back of the cabinet.


I carefully wrapped the fabric around the sides of the wood so it would look neat and tidy.


It's ready to go back on the door!

My cabinet door is all ready!


After a slightly rough time reattaching the door to the cabinet, here is the final product!


And the cabinet in use...



This is the front of the cabinet. It's missing the handle that opens it/holds it closed. It got lost in all the fixing up of the house... I have to find it. I'll take another picture once it's found!

ETA: My dad found the handle in his garage. No idea how it managed to get all the way back to their house, but I'm glad it has been found!






And that is my cabinet refinishing adventure, about 10-12 years in the making! It's wonderful to open the cabinet and find a surprise on the inside- and such a pretty one too!

Now that project is finished... what ever will I do with myself?