Painting Projects–Blue Cupboard

A post from Kelli–

Because I had the month of June off, I decided that I was going to go through and redo a few cosmetic things in my house.  As much as I have a few issues with my house, I have come to the realization that we aren’t going to be moving anytime soon and so I better start to love it and deal with its odd quirks (4 doorways and 4 appliances–stove, fridge, washer, and dryer) in the kitchen rather than get mad at them.  With Jason farming and a very limited area that he would be able to move to, there just aren’t any options in our area for housing.

One thing that I wanted to do was find a way to store my quilting supplies projects a bit better.  I do have a closet (with a closet) off of my sewing room, but its kind of an odd shape and I usually have to rip lots of stuff out to get to the one thing in the back.  I was looking for a piece of furniture that I might be able to restore or work on to add to my sewing room.  When I went to get the mower out of our little red shed about a month ago, I rediscovered “the blue cupboard.”

Mom had gifted me this beauty a few years ago when we lived at a different house and when we moved, we didn’t have an immediate need for it, so we just set it out on the red shed.  As you can see, I didn’t take very good care of it and it was partially exposed to the elements resulting in some lovely paint chipping.  I knew that the cupboard had a lot of usable room, so I decided that it would be a perfect fit for my sewing room.

I got to work with an old pan scraper (I was too impatient to buy a paint scraper) and scraped off all of the peeling paint.  Then I sanded it lightly with 150 grit sandpaper to get any other loose pieces of paint off and set to painting it.  When I started in on the drawers, it turned out that a few of the drawers had more peeling paint on  them that others, so I had to add a bit of elbow grease to my scraping regimen because I was worried that the chips may show through the paint.  I quickly applied 2 coats of Graphite chalk paint from Annie Sloan and let it completely dry.  I did a bit more sanding, added a coat of clear wax, and finished the cupboard with a coat of dark wax.

After I got it moved into the house, I added a few little knick-knacks to the top (my favorite being a tin can that my grandma wrapped in clear contact paper and used to store her safety pins) and found that all of my quilting books fit almost perfectly on the top.  I had previously used the space to hold a desk that I had gotten rid of, so I used the top 2 drawers to hold office type supplies, the 3rd drawer to hold “crafty” stuff, the 4th drawer to hold my stitching and embroidery supplies and the large bottom drawer to hold any additional computer supplies and books.  I used the large door to the left to hold UFO’s on shelves.

I think that my favorite part of the cupboard is the worn looking drawers.  When I sanded the cupboard down before adding the wax, I made sure to pay special attention to the edges of the drawers and positioning of the drawer handles to show wear as I was looking to give the piece a distressed look.

Over all, I am extremely excited about how the cupboard worked in the space.  It definitely holds much more that the desk I previously used did!