Vintage Door Front Turned into a Cabinet.
I finished my cabinet! This type of re-purpose where you design as you go is my absolute favorite kind of project. I took my time on this one, I wanted to enjoy the process. In case you missed it here's what I started with.
A built in corner cabinet front that had been salvaged from some old farmhouse. (I don't know if it was a farmhouse but that sounds nice doesn't it?) I found it in the back of an Antique store. It was in great shape and I knew I wanted to turn it back into a cabinet. Just not a corner one. This isn't a detailed tutorial since I doubt there are many of these laying around for anyone to remake but I thought I'd show you my process.
I started by heading to the lumber yard and having them rip down a 4 x 8 sheet of birch plywood lengthwise to 11 3/4" panels. I always try to have them make the major cuts for me because it saves so much hassle when I get home. I mean I can barely lift a 4x8 3/4" sheet of plywood. Then once back at home I cut the pieces to the lengths I needed with my miter saw. To attach everything together I used my pocket hole jig to make the holes for the screws. I built just a very basic cabinet the challenge was designing it to fit and compliment my door front.
I ended up cutting a small notch in the bottom piece so that it would fit inside my cabinet and rest on the bottom shelf. Once I made sure everything was square and lined up I glued and screwed the door front to my new cabinet.
You can see above that I put the pocket holes on the outside of the cabinet. This was because I thought I was going to cover them with some sort of big trim or beadboard. Once I attached the front I decided that would be too much. I wanted to keep it simple and let the front really stand out. So then I had to fill the holes with putty.
I decided to cut my own trim to mimic the edge of the front piece and create a paneled effect. Because it had been a corner cabinet the sides were cut at 45 degree angles. I used my table saw set at a 45 to cut down a 1x4 to make my trim.
I like it.
At the bottom I added a 1 x board and a small piece of trim to coordinate with the top.
I lined the top shelves up with the panes of glass on the door and attached with screws through pocket holes from underneath. To finish it off I inset a piece of 3/4" plywood to the back of the bottom half to give it some weight in the back. The doors on the front make it front heavy. On the top back I used a 1/4" plywood panel and covered it with vintage sheet music. To adhere it I used wallpaper paste because I didn't want it to look shiny or sealed like mod podge makes it look. Plus I happened to find a tub of wallpaper paste when I cleaned out the garage that was still good.
I stained all the new wood to match the old because I planned to use milk paint and hoped to get some chipping. I did ;)
I wasn't sure how much chipping I would get because with Milk Paint you just never know so at first I only painted the front. I applied three coats of Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint in the color Linen. After it was dry I scraped and sanded and then made my plan for the sides.
If the paint hadn't chipped off the front I would have just painted over the stained new wood so that it matched. Since it did chip and I wanted it to chip off the new wood I used Hemp Oil as a resist technique. I rubbed the Hemp Oil on in various places with a cloth. I didn't wait for it to dry I just painted right over the hemp oil. It works great. The places I put the hemp oil had chipping. Also it did some cool crackled thing in some places where I didn't put hemp oil but had recently stained. So there's another trick to getting some fun looks with the paint.
