Small Cabinet Makeover

I wanted to show you this little makeover job I did on this apothecary cabinet a friend no longer needed and graciously offered to me. It was the perfect size for our guest room where the current cabinet was sitting, only too wide to be able to open the closet’s bifold doors all of the way. Annoying. Super annoying. Now the lilac and Parisian theme this cabinet had going for it was perfect for a girl’s room where it had previously lived, but wasn’t quite the look I have going in our guest room.

I love apothecary chests and anything with lots of little drawers so it did pain me a but to take out some of the drawers, but a few were falling apart and we need shelf storage where this little gal was headed.

First step was to sand the lilac paint off because I would have had a dickens of a time painting over that with a light color. Then I took the backing off so I could get to all of the support bars for those drawers. Cut off the vertical bars in the front and back on the lower three rows of drawers so I could lay a thin sheet of plywood on the horizontal bars to make shelves. Used some leftover MDF as well as trim I had pulled off our doorways when we replaced the doors in the house to make the doors. I cut the trim down, using the smaller inside edge and decided to also edge the drawer to match. 

To finish it off, I gave it a coat of Dixie Belle’s Sea Glass, then two coats of Fusion’s Raw Silk, and finally a coat of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth. Sand to distress a little and let those different colors peek through a bit, add some knobs, hang the doors, and voila! New cabinet for the guest room.  And the best part? We can now open the closet bifold doors all of the way!!