Scavenger Chic

Vintage Window Jewelry Cabinet diy

• By Joan
• July 20, 2015
• 11 Comments

Next week marks the one year anniversary that I started Scavenger Chic. Frankly, when I started the blog I had no idea what I was doing but I knew I had tons of projects that I wanted to share and hopefully I’ve been able to inspire you.

Over the past year, I have joined Pinterest,  Instagram, Twitter, Google+, bloglovin, Flipboard, I share on Hometalk and on 1001 Pallets…but the big one…Facebook…has always been on my to-do list.  That is until last week.  I have finally joined Facebook. So those of you who get most of your info from Facebook, I hope you follow along.

I set up my homepage just fine, but when it came to setting up a page devoted to my blog, I was clueless.  I had to call in the big guns, my daughter-in-law, Mollie. Mollie, who is married to my middle son, Kevin, is the sweetest girl in the whole world, the queen of social media, the BIT grad (business, information, technology) made it her mission to help me, and after a couple of days she had me in business.  OK, I still have a little tweaking to do, but I am definitely getting there.

So, to thank Mollie for all her time and effort, I am gifting her this jewelry cabinet.

The cabinet is built around an old vintage window. If you have lots of jewelry, the bigger the better. My window measured in at 27″x 34″, hopefully it’s enough room to hold all her bits and pieces.

Cut a piece of backer board for your cabinet.  Use your window as a template but then add another 1/4 inch to both the width and length to allow your cabinet to open without rubbing. 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch plywood should work…whatever you have leftover from previous projects.

Figure out how deep you want your cabinet allowing for the backer board, the window and pallet wood decoration. I used a 1 x 6 length of wood which gives me only a 2 1/2″ shelf width inside the cabinet with all the other stuff going on.  If you use a 1 x 8 piece of wood you will have a 4 1/2 inch shelf.

Sorry, I can’t give you exact measurements for any of the cuts since all windows are different.

Using the backer board as your guide, cut two end pieces  to the exact width of the backer and nail into place.

Now you can cut your two side pieces measuring the entire length of your cabinet with ends intact. Nail the side pieces to the backer and end pieces.

If you are using pallet wood, paint the back of the cabinet black or dark brown.  You want any spaces between the pallet wood to look like just a shadow.

The outside of the cabinet was given a coat of white trim paint.

The inside, sides of the cabinet can be painted any color of your choosing.

Start cutting your pallet wood to fit snugly inside the cabinet.

You could paint the pallet wood and just give your cabinet a paneled effect.  Check out the inside of my ironing board cabinet.

But since I had just done that, here is a little bit different technique.  Modpodge dictionary pages onto the pallet wood.

Using an electric palm sander, sand off the edges so they look a little fuzzy.

Brush on a dark wax and rub off with a rag. I did apply less stain to the center of the dictionary pages and concentrated more on the edges.

The pallet wood can be nailed into the cabinet with finishing nails.  With the same stain I also treated the inside of the cabinet that was painted blue.

Any nail holes or flaws on the outside of the cabinet were filled with wood putty, sanded and the entire outside was given a second coat of paint.  This was white semigloss interior trim paint.

The panes of the window were painted with 2 coats of chalkboard paint.

As instructed on the bottle of chalkboard paint “lightly rub chalk over paint to condition”.  Don’t quite  know what that does, but I do like to follow directions (at least some of the time).

The extra chalk is then erased.

I originally wanted to put the lyrics to a song that was meaningful to both my son and daughter-in-law.

Text to son..”Do you and Mollie have a special song?”

Text back to mom…”No”

OK, so much for that idea. Plan B…since my daughter-in-law was born in China, some beautiful chinese characters would be great. These were found on the internet, so I’m hoping she can read them and I didn’t write them upside down. That would not be good.

It’s super simple to transfer lettering onto a chalkboard.  

Print out the character to the exact size you need and use white chalk to cover the back of your paper.

Lay the paper down on the window pane and using a pen trace the outline of your image. Once done, it should look like the middle picture.

Using a chalk pen (from the craft store) fill in the lettering.

Now do that 5 more times.

I believe the chalk pen is permanent until you wash it off. So, if I did any of these wrong or inadvertently wrote something I shouldn’t have, it should be able to be washed off. 🙂

The window is now attached to the cabinet with hinges. 

Cut a shelf to fit the width of the cabinet…it’s only 2 1/2 inches wide.  This shelf was then painted white like the outside of the cabinet.

Installed screw hooks.

The bottom of the cabinet was left for earring storage. 

1. Using some thin pieces of leftover boards, create a rectangle and attach it directly to the cabinet with nails. Whatever scrap wood you have available should work, you just want to elevate the mesh off the pallet wood. The only requirement is that it should be able to be hidden by the trim pieces (last photo)

2. Using staples attach wire mesh to the boards you just nailed on.

3. Miter the ends of  decorative molding and using finishing nails attach to all of the above. You can finish the molding any way you like, mine was pulled out of our old bathroom so it already had a nice finish.

The mesh easily holds the loopy earrings and even hoops can slide right in.

Other screws or nails can be inserted anywhere to hold bracelets, rings, watches, big loopy earrings…

 

You could probably double the number of hooks or add as many screws as you like. Customize it to your jewelry.

Hope you like your present Mollie, I really can’t thank you enough.

Have a great week everyone…stay cool.

Shared at Inspire me Tuesday, Trash 2 Treasure, Wow us Wednesdays,

Vintage Inspiration Party, Treasure Hunt Thursday, Think and Make Thursday,

Handmade Hangout Party, Friday Favorites, The Painted Drawer,

Link Party Palooza, Upcycled Link Party, DIY Sunday Showcase,

Sundays at Home, Amaze me Monday, That DIY Party,

Metamorphosis Monday, Friday Favorites,