Upcycled Cabinet Top

8 Materials
$100
8 Hours
Medium

We took this trashed cabinet top and upcycled it into a princess bookcase.

This was the remnants of a china cabinet that was disassembled and left for the taking. The bottom was severely damaged so we decided although the top was in pretty bad shape as well, it was salvageable.

As you can see, it was pretty beat up. We knew there would be areas that we needed to fill and repair.

We began by taking off the doors and cleaning. We used krud kutter and rinsed afterwards.

We then began to fill the deep gouges with wood filler and a spreader. Once that was dry we sanded. Starting with 150 on most of the body and then working up to 220 on the places where there was filler.

We then broke out the bondo once realizing that the filler wasn't holding as strongly as we wanted.

We then found some legs that we had leftover from another project and decided to sand and use for this piece. We attached those to a wood base, added trim and attached that to the top cabinet.

We then primed with shellac base bin and painted the whole piece in a beautiful grey/blue color.

Then added a wash of a little lighter blue called Louis Blue. We used 80% water and 20% paint, brushed on and then wiped off immediately with a scrunched up rag. This is many times called a ragging technique.

Then we broke out some gold paint and this beautiful Chandelier stencil and rolled it on.

We then sealed the piece with a polycrylic and reattached the doors. It is now fit for a princess.

Resources for this project:
See all materials
Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Hometalk may collect a small share of sales from the links on this page.More info
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
  1 question
Comments
Join the conversation
 2 comments
  • Aimee Aimee on Aug 08, 2022

    Wow! What an amazing transformation!

  • Linda Ross Linda Ross on Dec 24, 2022

    Although I like the color, this piece looks a little off. I think it’s the base. Perhaps attaching the legs directly to the cabinet would look better. Could do that easily with screws from the inside of the cabinet. Or, maybe, it’s the legs themselves. In any case, it has inspired me to do something similar with a leftover cabinet I have.

Next