French Provincial China Cabinet Makeover

Today, we’ve hit Day 20 of rain in the past month. I wish I were exaggerating.

Somehow, rainy days always make me a planner. I make lists and write in goals on my Google calendar and pin great ideas and fill up online shopping carts, but then guess what? When those rainy days start adding up, I’ve got a whole lotta nothing to show for it.

And let’s put it this way…my last load of laundry was full of nothing but pajamas and yoga pants. #productivityfail

Except this week, I did get this ray of sunshine in my life…

As luck would have it, I happened to tackle this one just in time for Trash to Treasure Tuesday.

If you saw last week’s messy house tour, you’ve already gotten a glimpse of this baby. Robert and I had decided several months ago, shortly after hauling our buffet into the dining room, that the measurements were not at all doable.

Sometimes, okay a lot of times, I learn lessons the hard way, and while I really liked our buffet, it was over 2 feet deep and our dining room felt really cramped. With Thanksgiving on the way, and a headcount of over 20 people coming over for dinner in a few weeks, we decided now was the time to sell it and find a not-so-massive replacement.

I stumbled upon this beautiful French Provincial china cabinet at a flea market last weekend with the perfect measurements for our dining room and for the exact same price that I sold the buffet ($250). It was destiny, right?

At first glance, I thought maybe I could keep the wood look, strip the orange-y stain, and do a weathered wood finish. But I’ve shared before how much I have an aversion to wood stripping and since time was a major constraint and it was impossible to work outside in our month-long monsoon, I chose to paint it instead.

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I still had plenty of Fusion Mineral Paint in Ash leftover from our foyer table makeover, so I busted it out of my craft stash again.

I gave the entire cabinet a rub down of deglosser first to remove any dusting residue and wood oil. Deglosser is key! Even with chalk paint for me. That no-prep draw doesn’t always work.

Fusion Mineral Paint was so nice to give me a couple other colors to try out too. It’s become my new favorite because unlike chalk paint, I don’t have to seal it with wax when I’m finished painting. It’s a one-and-done kind of deal. And it’s cheaper than chalk paint too, which is always a winner to me. (You can get a free tester pot here if you ever feel like trying it out. It’s good until the end of November.)

For the china cabinet, it only needed one coat and was completely dry in an hour. It’s self-leveling, so none of my wonky brush strokes were visible at all.

I gave the whole piece a quick sanding with a medium grit sanding block to distress it a bit and let some of the wood underneath peek through. It’s amazing how different the paint looked after sanding.

I left the hardware alone and just put it back on the cabinet when I was finished painting since the finish already worked so perfectly with the nailhead trim on our dining chairs.

For the inside of the hutch, I used more Fusion Mineral Paint in the color Sterling. It has just a slightly cool gray tint to it.

When it was all dry, I loaded it up with my grandmother’s silver that had been locked away for decades. Thanksgiving always reminds me of her, and I love that I was able to pull out some of her pieces and polish them up just in time for the holiday. She would have been absolutely tickled to see it all displayed.

By the way, if you’re ever registering for your wedding, go with a plain white china set! I use mine ALL the time. It’s timeless. My mom knew what she was doing when she gave me that tip five years ago. (My inner teenager is really struggling admitting that last statement.)

Isn’t it sweet now?! I don’t normally go for curvy details on furniture and usually stick to clean lines, but I couldn’t help myself with this one.

The cabinet is half the depth that the buffet was so we have plenty more room to move in here now.

By the way, see our window over there on the left? We framed it! I’ll be sharing more about it soon on Remodelaholic, but basically, we gave it the ol’ DIY window trim treatment that we did in Olivia’s bedroom.

I’m still hoping to add a rug under our table (because whose idea was it to do carpet in a dining room?), do a different finish on the round table, and maybe even add board and batten or a shiplap wall in here, but we’ll get to it all one day.

Here’s what we were working with when we first moved in December 2013:

This room has had a great little journey so far. It’s really all thanks to thrifty finds and little imagination.

When I took these photos of our dining room it was actually pouring buckets outside. A lot of sweet talking to my camera had to go into this one.

But hark, y’all! Sunshine is in the forecast for tomorrow! That page-long to-do list has it coming.

 You can see all of the other transformations and to-do list tackling from a few of my bloggy friends for Trash to Treasure Tuesday:

Confessions of a Serial Do-It-Yourselfer | Prodigal Pieces | Artsy Chicks Rule | Girl in the Garage

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