Scavenger Chic

Upcycled Kitchen Cabinet Side Table

• By Joan
• August 20, 2020
• 9 Comments

Upcycled Kitchen Cabinet Side Table

Over the past few months I’ve been helping my middle son and his wife update a little of their 1980 house.  A 1980’s house doesn’t sound that old but styles have changed, a lot!

These yellow/orange oak cabinets are in a loft area above their living room. It was orignially designed as a beverage center, snack center? At least that’s what it appears to be with a wine rack and small sink. 

While the style of their house is very contemporary modern, there is nothing contemporary or modern about these cabinets. They ended up leaving the larger cabinet where it was. It has undergone a dramatic makeover which  I’ll show you sometime when I can get more pictures.  The two wall cabinets were taken down and the wine cabinet is what we’re tackling today.

When the wine cabinet was taken down it was immediately offered to my youngest son, Nathan, who was about to move into off campus housing at the University of Maryland.

Nathan still didn’t know whether he wanted to make this a stand alone wine cabinet or a side table but once I brought out this old chippy cabinet door front, which just happened to fit perfectly, and a set of 4 hairpin legs which I had purchased at Hobby Lobby a couple of years ago and never used, a vision of a side table was emerging.

BTW, the chippy cabinet door was one of two doors my neighbor gave me when she moved.  The other cabinet door became this wall cabinet.

Because this was old paint with questionable history, he sealed the paint with a combination of wood glue and water.  The glue and water stops the paint from peeling any further and seals in the old paint.

The wine rack was easily knocked out of the center of the cabinet with a mallet.

He sprayed the inside of the cabinet with black spray paint.

And he decided to fill in the inset on the sides of the cabinet with scrap wood.

Before adding the side inset pieces he stained those pieces with a dark walnut stain.

The four shorter stained boards are going to be used for a shelf on the inside of the cabinet.

More scrap wood to create a frame around the inset side stained pieces.  Here they are partially precut and prepainted.

Use finish nails to attach the frame to the sides of the cabinet.  Fill in any holes with wood putty, sand and touch up with additional black paint.

A top was created from 2 additional pieces of 2″ scrap wood.   He used a table saw to bevel the edges and dark walnut stain to match the side insets.  Wood glue and clamps held the top pieces together until the glue had dried.

The door was attached with preexisting hinges and he found the handle in my box of junk.

The hairpin legs screw onto the bottom of the cabinet.

He created a magnetic closure in the upper left hand corner of the cabinet by drilling holes in both the cabinet and the door and inserting 2 small magnets (18x4mm-27pcs, black).

He did a great job with this upcycled kitchen cabinet.  You would never know that it used to be a wine rack.

Stay well and stay inspired.

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