outdated cabinet- DO OVER!

 Needless to say, the box is usually running over, and not a good long-term solution. The dining table is usually mass-chaos because we have nowhere else to put the books while we are actually doing school. Or should I say we had no place.
 My first instinct was to buy a very narrow bookshelf from IKEA. I was going there last week anyway with my sister, but then I looked at our budget for the month. A shelf from IKEA wasn’t going to happen his month, and I needed a solution now.

Enter this guy:

I honestly don’t even remember where we got it, but we used it in our upstairs play/TV room with our old school TV- until we got a flat screen (for free! hooray!) this summer. I moved this cart to our garage and stored our accumulation of spray paint and paint cans in it. But, I knew it would fit just perfectly in the breakfast room and store all of our books. But clearly, it was nothing pretty.

So, I primed it:

With this stuff:

(this works really well! It basically gives a flat finish to anything so you can make it pretty!)

Painted it:

And then I remembered a stencil I had bought a while back from Hobby Lobby, and I stenciled that baby!
Oh, FYI, stencil paint is amazing! It is really thick so it doesn’t seep behind the stencil. It’s amazing the good results when you do what you’re supposed to do! 😉

I let it dry for about an hour, then I brought it in. Then I smeared the stenciled part on one side really badly, but I wiped it off with a baby wipe (what would I do without those??!!) and re-did it, and it turned out fine. What do you think?

I love that I can shut it, and all the mess is out of sight! Now I can’t wait to start school tomorrow! (Although I am under no delusion that the table will be clean during the day! ha!)

Total Cost of this makeover: $0! I had everything I needed, so a few hours and a little patience was all it took!

pssst… are you married? Do you write, whether you are a blogger or not? I’d love to talk to you about guest posting in my series on marriage, “old {and young} wives’ tales.” e-mail me benandkelli01@aol.com for more info!

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