*Free* Hutch Cabinet Makeover
My favorite price for anything is: FREE! I follow several yard sale pages on Facebook, which are great (and more visually-friendly) places to hunt down local second-hand items. I highly suggest joining some if you like finding things used!
This find was almost providential. My husband and I were discussing the need for some kind of bookcase/storage solution for the living room, and approximately two hours later I stumbled on this listing. It was FREE, and I had my husband’s truck with me (which is rare), so I was able to grab it within hours of it being listed (free items never last long on these sites). Pretty much all the furniture-finding stars aligned and I was able to land this great piece for my next refinishing project.
Although the wood was in a dated 80’s finish, the piece had a lot of potential: it was still in solid shape and had great details (the brass pulls, the beadboard backing, the beveled drawers, the crown molding – swoon!). It just needed an updated look! I knew I wanted to paint most of it while leaving the drawer fronts wood-toned. I didn’t want the current blonde finish, so I stripped the drawers down to bare wood with my orbital sander and restained them in Minwax English Chestnut. That part took some time, but was very much worth it. I love the contrast and warmth it adds. Plus, sticky painted drawers are not my favorite thing.
I also had to prepare the surfaces I wanted to paint. I sanded the wood lightly and rubbed it down with some liquid deglosser to hopefully get better paint adhesion. I used Benjamin Moore’s “Raccoon Fur” for the finishing paint, which is the same color I used to paint some of my interior doors dark. I accidentally ended up with a gallon of this color, so I figured slapping some on this massive piece of furniture would be a good way to use some of it up! Plus, I love navy furniture, and this smoky navy black is perfect for our living room color scheme (white, gray, tan, and navy).
I also sealed the wooden drawers and the painted surfaces with Minwax Satin Polycrylic – which dries fast and offers great sealing protection. (One tip if you’re sealing both stained and painted surfaces like I was here: have two separate cans of poly – a stain one and a paint one. Or do the painted surfaces first and the stained ones second. This is because the brush will pick up some of the stain as you apply the sealant and it will tinge the can of remaining clear coat. I was working with a dark paint color with this project, but you can get a brownish hue on your lighter furniture pieces if you don’t keep your cans of poly separate. Live and learn!).
The hutch originally came with two glass doors, which I also refinished in the same wood and blue scheme, but when I put them on the hutch I didn’t like how closed it in it looked and how it obscured the pretty decor and books on the shelves. So I decided to make it an open-face cabinet and now it looks more like a bookcase and less like a china cabinet. (Some helpful voters on IG also helped me make the decision). 🙂
All in all, this was a great makeover project for me. It was super low cost (because I had almost all of the materials on hand already), and it filled up this blank wall in our living room perfectly. It’s also been great to have some enclosed storage for the kids’ piles of toys, puzzles, and art supplies. This piece will be staying with us for a long time.
