I don’t know if you follow Liz Marie Galvan but she is hands down my favorite blogger and insragramer. If insragramer is even a word… Haha. She has such an adorable style that is so cozy and beautiful. It feels like you could live there. She is super relatable, she talks often about her personal life and even her struggles, making those of us who have never even met her, feel like we’re old friends.

Last year she shared an antique cabinet that she found on Instagram and I was immediately swooning!

This is the screenshot I grabbed because I just loved it so much! I had been looking for something similar that I could put in our dining room. You see when we remodeled our kitchen we removed the ONLY storage closet we had. It was crazy but worth it for a pantry. So I was hurting for some storage but needed something that was beautiful and functional. I wanted to be able to put all our school stuff in it so we could just open and go at the dining room table, then put it away. Then comes this picture and boom I was hit with inspiration!

I knew I couldn’t afford to buy a beautiful antique cabinet like this so I started formulating how I could make one that looked similar. I stared at the picture, studied the lines and came up with a decent hack. I knew I needed to find something square, kind of similar in shape. I started scouring through Craigslist for armoires and TV cabinets. Then I came across this in the free section…

And bonus it was real wood!! Every once in a while you hit Craigslist gold. My sister helped me pick it up and I got to work!

If you look at the inspiration picture her cabinet has trim across the top, wainscoting doors and chippy crackle paint. So I knew I needed doors and some paint. After chatting with my woodworking hubby I decided against adding trim because there wasn’t a lot of space to nail a good trim into the top. And since I knew I would be decorating on top of it, I didn’t want to have a lip around the top.

First job was to remove the original doors and hinges.

It already looks better. Next I knew I needed to find some large flat wood pieces to make doors. I just so happen to already have three large wood pieces from a friend’s remodel we were helping them with. They had been large pantry shelves and were good solid wood that I knew would come in handy! The wood would need to be cut down so I measured the opening of the left hand side, then I used the two smaller cabinets as my width measurements for the two right hand doors. I needed the doors to be wide and tall enough to just cover the openings but still have room for hinges. So I marked out my measurements on the wood and hubby cut them to size for me.

The inspiration cabinet had beautiful wainscoting doors. My wood was flat and I thought about buying cheap wainscoting and attaching it to the doors, but hubby had a better idea. He used a wainscoting router bit he had and helped me cut lines into my existing door pieces! Now this part is a little more advanced because routering a good straight line isn’t easy. You have to know how to set up a straight edge to follow. My husband is a very skilled carpenter so he made it look easy!

Next came paint. I painted the cabinet using a valspar crackling finish. I painted the door fronts, top of the cabinet and sides.

After the right amount of time to dry, I painted over the crackle with some white paint I already had on hand. I quickly took a blow dryer to the paint because it causes the cracks to be a little bigger.

Next it was time to hang the doors. I first screwed my hinges evenly into each of my doors. Then I used a level and made a light mark across the top to show the height I needed each door to hang at. My daughter held each door up to the top and I would screw the hinges in place where they were. My husband did not think this was the right way to do it, but it worked for me! Haha! Last I marked where I wanted my knobs to be and drilled small holes for them.

I loved the knobs I found at hobby lobby! They were the perfect antique look. Notice I didn’t waste time painting the inside of my doors… Totally personal preference there.

I love the extra surface it gives to decorate. Our house is small and we don’t have a lot of places to add this type of fun decor. Plus now I have a bunch of extra storage!

This whole cabinet cost me less than 30$ because all I bought was the Valspar glaze, knobs and hinges! Sometimes when you can’t have the real thing, a diy hack is the next best thing!

❤️ Rachael