Furniture Makeover, Hand Painted Country Cabinet to Colorful and Funky Using Recycled and Repurposed Elements

Here's a fun little furniture makeover I completely recently.

I started with this very country style wooden cabinet.

It's a sturdy piece and I thought it had potential to become something more our style.

The little country house isn't going to cut it for me. :) 

Starting from the bottom, this is what I did...and didn't do!

I had the idea to add a curvy corner piece and cut the door to fit it,

so I did that, but... 

After it was all mounted and the door cut, I realized how much better

THIS corbel would work, so I changed them out... and yes

I had already glued and screwed the previous piece into place.

Here is the new corbel, luckily, it's larger so it didn't really

affect my new cuts in the door. I like this version much better.

This is a very old corbel so it probably is coated with lead paint, I left it

as is and dry brushed a few colors on top of it then sealed with poly.

I didn't really have an exact plan on colors so I just played and  

layered colors as I went.

For the drawer, I had a large, rusty and aged metal house number "0"

so I cut an opening in the drawer to match the number and 

attached it as the "drawer pull". Someone on my Facebook page

said it looked like a mouth...and it kind of does! haha

I painted the sides in stripes and the inside in a deep purpley pink,

I think that color looks great with the turquoise drawer front.

Right above the drawer, I cut out the little area on the back

just to mix it up and have another area to add a fun element. 

I had this metal plaque that used to be a wall hanging and I used it to fill that open area. 

I simply screwed it in from the back and left it pretty much the same color.

For the doors, I removed the country heart door inserts.

I had a pair of large decorative metal clock hands and thought 

they would be fun as the inserts...

I turned them different directions and mounted from the inside.

I decided to paint the inside of the cabinet behind the doors

in layered turquoise and aqua colors.

I edged the fronts of the shelves in thumbtacks, painted right over them in turquoise,

washed with brown and wiped off the excess.

I really love thumbtacks. I've used them on dollar store pumpkins, 

a recycled angel and a table leg dragonfly

...just to name a few.

Search for "thumbtacks" on my blog for other ideas. They are totally underrated.

The original doors had cute little white porcelain knobs that I removed,

(of course I saved them, they are perfect dragonfly eyes), but I wanted

something more colorful, and I wanted them in a different spot on the door.

I had a colorful ceramic knob I wanted to use...just one, but of course I needed two. 

So I painted a pair of wooden finials in the style of the ceramic knob and coated with

 glossy Rustoleum Lacquer for a ceramic look.

They are much more shiny than this photo is showing.

For the very top of the cabinet, I wanted a pediment of some sort.

I had half a clock face leftover from one of my colorful architectural angels

and that was my jumping off point, but...it needed something else...

This is a set of resin plaques I used to have hanging on my wall.

I decided to incorporate part of them as well, so I cut it apart...

It actually cut pretty easily with the jigsaw and I left it the same color

and touched up the cut ends with paint.

I attached the resin piece with glue to the clock face and secured

the whole assembly to the top of the cabinet.

I also added a little carved wooden piece from a chair to this top area. 

The "knob" for the bottom door is literally a fragment from another

carved wooden piece and I brushed on turquoise paint over the 

original brown finish.

I attached to the door with a little screw...

I painted the inside of the bottom door as well as the 

inside of the cabinet and added a few stripes on the shelf edge.

I added lots of layers of color to the front of the cabinet door.

In my mind, when painting colorful pieces, I think they can all benefit

from a touch of black, or a black and white combo. I use the black and white

checks and stripes a lot in my pieces and this was no exception.

I added stripes in the middle...

On little side "support" pieces I added...

On the insides of the legs...

There's really no place left unpainted on this piece! 

Like I mentioned, I ended up layering different colors on the whole

piece, sanding a bit or wiping off as I went to get a nice aged effect.

I also washed everything with thinned brown paint and wiped off to tone

it all down.

I wasn't super careful when combining and layering the colors,

I wanted a whimsical, artsy look.

So there you have it...

Country to funky.

Thank you so much for reading about my cabinet makeover!

Visit my new online shop that featured my mosaics and you can 

always find me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

I still have some items and reduced paintings in my Etsy shop (June 2017)

Angel Sculpture Made From Repurposed Wood and Recycled Pieces PLUS How to Make your own Beaded Wood Trim Tutorial

My latest architectural angel sculpture...

 She's large, almost 3 feet tall, and I created her 

using lots of repurposed and recycled bits.

This is the fourth angel I've made. It is so much fun 

to me to combine all those random pieces and come up with 

something unique and beautiful.

It started with this pile of stuff, some I ended up using, some not,

but the main piece was a huge wooden balustrade that one 

of my sister's gave me.

Here is the wood balustrade for the body, on top of that is a wooden 

fluted furniture foot and on top of that is a round wood furniture foot for the head.

I used my last two pieces of the wood with the carved detail for the wings.

I joined the wing pieces with a galvanized metal star that was once a lid to a candle...

I knew I would use it one day.

To make it sturdy, I made a frame for the base using scrap lumber

cut with miter saw and screwed in from the bottom.

After the main body pieces were assembled, I brushed on a base coat of tan paint.

This time, instead of using my normal block painting technique for the layered paint look, 

I took a short cut and applied spackling paste randomly on the body... that's the white

areas in the pic. I rubbed it on with my hands and with a putty knife and let dry.

When the spackle is dry and you can start brushing and layering paint. 

Your brush will naturally grab onto the bumpy areas and you are are

just that much closer to a wonderful aged finish.

After I brushed on the green, I block painted 

adding a few more colors here and there.

I have several different sizes of blocks I use, depending on the 

area, and I just wipe them off and reuse them.

If you have globs of thickened paint in containers

that you would normally throw away, don't.

"Globby" paint is perfect for this technique.

This is after all my base layers of paint, ready for the next step...

I started adding white paint to the body... you can also see the layered 

teal, green, turquoise and white I added to the base.

After the white was applied, I decided the body needed a little more detail.

I used a technique I've done before using plastic beads and spackle

to create a carved, beaded wood trim look.

This is a dresser I did years and years ago, one of my niece's has it now. 

It had a grooved recess around all the drawers. I glued 

the plastic beads in the groove, covered with spackle and painted.

It adds lots of interesting detail to a piece.

Once it's all painted, I think it looks pretty authentic!

On the angel, I glued the beads on in two areas using hot glue...

I used Flexall (flexall has been discontinued), because it's what I had on hand.

I've also done this technique with spackle or joint compound as well.. 

You just smooth it over the beads, creating a thick layer and let dry.

When it's dry, sand down to create a smooth finish and paint.

Of course... I had decided to add this after I had 

painted everything, so I had to go back and redo the 

painting on that part!

This is how it will end up

For the bottom of the balustrade, I added studded fleur de lis...

I started with fleur de lis wood cut outs bought on Mardi Gras clearance.  

I layered them with spackle and paint for a rusty look then 

added painted thumbtack "studs" to add a little more interest.

I love my thumbtacks, I've used them on 

pumpkins, Christmas ornaments and dragonfly bodies too.

For the wavy metal trim on the body, I used squares of aluminum flashing.

I had oxidized the sheets in one of my making things rusty and aged batches

and used wavy scissors to cut strips.

The halo started as a rusty piece of metal from a lamp...I promise that's

paint under my nails. I hammered it flat and coated it with poly to 

darken the rusty part then lightly brushed a little teal paint.

I ended up swirling a little bit of starry wire around the halo as well.

I don't have a pic, but at the end when it was all painted, I added a wash of thinned 

brown paint to the whole piece and wiped off excess to tone the whole thing down 

and a coat of satin poly.

I screwed everything in from the back and she was done ;)

I really love how she turned out. She would be lovely at 

Christmas or left out year round.

Visit my new online shop featuring my mosaic art.

I still have items and clearance paintings in my Etsy shop as well.

You can also find me on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and Pinterest too!

Thank you so much for checking out my angel!