I am on a mission to revamp some area’s around our house. I am leaning towards very clean, simple and timeless pieces. I had an idea of what I wanted but when I found these pieces I was pretty sure I could make this pretty close to what I was going to purchase for far less! This was what I wanted and used it as my inspiration!
The wall that this piece is going to go needs a pretty substantial piece and most likely would have needed two of this piece or another piece to fill this wall! I’m going for simple so I was not set of having 2 different pieces and 2 of these cabinets would have been over $3K!
Here’s the before picture of the pieces I bought off Facebook Marketplace. It is 2 separate pieces with a top and a bottom on each piece! This is NOT quality furniture, I will tell you that! But, sometimes it’s about the design of the piece and how it can be altered, yet be functional! It does have some water damage and does have an odor that had to be rectified!
So I started out cleaning it really well inside and out with a deodorizer! Ultimately, I knew this was going to need a full paint job inside and out with and an odor blocking primer! Plus, the primer to get any paint to stick to this surface was going to be a must!
My main goal for this was to make this piece appear to be one big piece instead of 4! Make it look seamless and modern! This piece was already fairly “modern”, I would say late 80’s early 90’s, but still had that out of date look! It did however have the clean and simple lines I was looking for, so a great base!
As you can tell from my inspo, I wanted white on the inside so I was able to showcase décor and then black on the outside! I have said this for years that having something black in every room can really ground a space even if its something small like candlesticks or a huge piece of furniture.
I started priming with Zinsser Bullseye 123 Water Based Primer for all surfaces, this will add a base for the paint to stick to and also block any odor. I painted the inside with Magnolia Home Paint in the color Shiplap. I find mine at Ace Hardware! The outside is painted with Tricorn Black by Sherwin Williams but mixed in Behr Marquee Paint by Home Depot.
There was quite a bit of trim work that had to be done in order to make this piece look as though it was one. I removed the trim from the top, middle and the bottom to allow for trim to wrap the entire piece! There were some casualties that ended up with a little bit of extra work but in the end it all worked out!
Before I could really join these together I had to take these tops off, flip over the bottom and create some support for the legs to be attached to, so that was next! The legs are from Amazon you can find them here! I laid 1 x 6’s down and nailed them into the bottom to allow for added support and a base to attach the legs!
Once that was done I put the top pieces back on and started trimming out! I did have to add a filler strip in between the 2 pieces to keep the doors from hitting when the doors were opened! This was just a simple 1 x 2 cut to the height of the piece and nailed off. I then ran pre primed 1 x 6 for the bottom and top trim. Then a 1 x 3 to the middle. I wrapped to bottom and top around the sides and well. I also added some batten material on the sides to give the piece a shaker style look and disguise the seam where the two pieces sit on top of each other.
I also primed and painted the inside to reduce the fun odor that was happening and then wrapped the shelves and bottom with a marble looking contact paper. I only did this for protection against sliding things in and out! Plus, it’s pretty!
I purchased these door pulls off of Amazon as well, I did have to fill and cover some of the previous holes to allow these to fit! This piece is huge so I knew it would need huge handles. The top pulls are 18 inches long and the bottoms are 10 inches, you can find them here! They also come in an array of sizes!
The final piece turned out pretty amazing! I spent $200 on the 2 cabinets about $150 on paint, wood and misc. supplies, $90 for the legs and $60 for the pulls. So for a total of $500 and some sweat equity we have a statement piece for this wall and “saved” us $2500! Win, Win! Hope you enjoyed this transformation!
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