Upcycled Glass Cabinet

by Country Chic Paint

8 Materials

Come find out how Mary from Orphans With Makeup used several Country Chic Paint colors to give this cabinet a beautiful new look with the help of a few stencils!

upcycled glass cabinet, kitchen cabinets, kitchen design, painted furniture, repurposing upcycling

Hello friends,

It’s Mary from Orphans With Makeup, and today I am sharing how I transformed an old “Frankenstein” bookshelf using paint and stencils. I call it “Frankenstein” as it had been built with all different scraps of wood and finishes, but nothing like paint to cover up all the imperfections!

I wanted to add faux stencils to the interior back panel for a bit of a whimsy look. I also got my husband two build me two frames to be used as doors. Below is what I started with. I’m working with just the top part on this project.

Now before I get started with the tutorial I just want to mention that I had first attempted to do the project with the back of the shelf intact and it proved to be quite difficult, especially trying to stencil the corners. When I finally took the time to remove the back panel, the painting and stencilling went so much easier. Some of the pictures were taken while the back was still intact, but if you can remove the backing, I would definitely recommend it.

Since there were many different finishes, I decided to paint all the interior white, just so I could start with an all even color, but you probably would skip this step.

The exterior was originally painted a distressed black but I decided I wanted a clean look so I refreshed the exterior with “Liquorice” and sealed with varnish. Next step is to paint the back panel the color that you want your grout lines to be (again, this is where most of you would start this project). In my case I went with a grey color. I painted “Coastal Fog” using a small roller brush.

Next step is to lay down the Ceramic Tile Stencil over the painted grout color and roller paint another color. In my case I chose “Simplicity” white. This color determines the background color of your faux tile.

This image is after the base grout color had been painted and then the ceramic tile background color was painted white, and it was at this point that I decided to remove the back panel from the shelf as it would have been impossible to lay the faux tile stencils flat.

Now came the fun part of painting the Talavera tile stencils. There are 6 different patterned tiles and each of the six stencils are individual stencils.

Get all your different color paints, brushes and paper towel ready. I also want to mention that since the partitioned sections of the cabinet were not that big, I strategically tried to place my stencils in the centre of each of the cubby holes and placed them accordingly so that the centre would show a full row of stencils, without being cut off.

I poured a bit of each color paint in small containers.

Dip and blot your brush. Paint in the stencils in a circular motion.

I added different shades of the same color (Coastal Fog, Pebble Beach and Sunday Tea) for some tiles and a bit of blue (Peacoat and Ocean Breeze) on others and alternatively mixed blues and grey on some other tiles.

I chose to not stencil a tile in each square, but rather randomly here and there.

Keep stencilling and painting until you’ve painted out all your squares.

If you mess up some grout lines, just go back and straighten out your lines with painter’s tape and retouch with a small brush as needed.

I added some polished silver hardware on the doors and the glass on the two doors still has to be installed.

I hope you enjoyed this stencilling project.

Enjoyed the project?

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Country Chic Paint: colours – Simplicity, Liquorice, Coastal Fog, Pebble Beach, Sunday Tea, Peacoa (Country Chic Paint)
Ceramic Tile Stencil (Royal Design Studio)
Talavera Tile Stencils (Royal Design Studio)
Stencil brushes
Painter’s tape
Small paint roller & brush
Tough Coat and Natural Wax (Country Chic Paint)
Paper towels for blotting