Gates of Crystal: Stenciling a Cabinet

January 10, 2014

Stenciling a Cabinet

Happy Belated New Year!

If you're like me you love decorating for Christmas but feel frustrated during the holiday season that you're not able to do any of the projects you're planning. We had a wonderful couple of weeks with everyone home and even had a few extra days due to bad weather. But everyone has returned to work and school and home and I'm looking forward to the new year.

I have a long list of things I'd like to do this year. And truthfully, I need to finish some projects I started a while back.

I have a few things I've reupholstered that I will blog. It's a lot easier to do than I ever thought and I would encourage you to try it! AND I need to finish the skirt on our couch slipcover! It has had a temporary skirt on it through the holidays! (oops!)

I'm thinking of redecorating our guest room. Because my daughter's family has moved close to us we will not need so many extra places to sleep. I have a desk in there and use that room as my office and I think I will make it more functional for my daily use.

I want to blog our master bedroom and bathroom this year. They need a few tweaks and then will be post-worthy. And I want to blog our other two bathrooms.

But the biggest thing I want to do is make-over our kitchen. It is a wonderfully functional kitchen but is dated. It's also open to the family room, dining room and living room - we have NO walls! I love white kitchens with a French Country/Rustic feel and I think I've talked my husband into tackling it this year.

But this morning, before anyone was awake, I was up painting this cabinet. You may remember it from an earlier post "Painting a Cabinet". It's been several colors over its life but most recently it was turquoise.

So shortly before Christmas (one morning before anyone was up) I painted it white. It stayed white over the holidays but I kept looking at it and instead of thinking what I was going to get everyone for Christmas, I was thinking how I was going to paint this cabinet. ;)

I have quite a selection of paints from trying to decide on colors so I mixed Sherwin-Williams 'Deer Valley' with a gold glaze in a jar.

Our entry hall used to be stenciled see here and I love this damask stencil. I also love this cabinet that was recently for sale at Joss and Main.

Here is the way the cabinet looked over the holidays.

I centered my stencil on the cabinet. I started out using Elmer's Spray Adhesive to hold it on but it got gummy and was leaving gunk on my cabinet so I switched to painter's tape.

I used a small sponge roller to paint the pattern, rolling it out well on my tray and using the smallest amount of paint possible.

If you've never stenciled before I wouldn't start with a project like this. It was difficult to work with the stencil because of the uneven surface of the cabinet. I also didn't realize before I started that I would not be able to match up the pattern and paint between the drawers and doors.

There were a couple of times during this project that I thought this was going to be a big fail. And when I got done with the stenciling I decided the pattern was much busier than I had originally wanted so I went back over the cabinet with a small paint brush and white paint and erased some of the stenciling.

I erased all the 'dots' and some of the smaller lines and ended up with this. I then went over the entire stencil and dry-brushed it with my white paint, softening it further. I left the top and sides of the cabinet 'un-stenciled.'

I then watered down my stencil paint and used it to 'antique' the whole cabinet. I used a brush to apply the watered-down paint and wiped it off with an old T-shirt. .

And here is the finished cabinet! It took me about 3-4 hours (from breakfast to lunch) to do all this, including the drying time between steps. Your paint dries quickly when you're stenciling because you're applying lightly.

And here it is in the room. I replaced the chair I had sitting here with an extra dining chair and took down the picture that was to the left. It looks a little empty so I may replace it with something. I made the pillow that's on the chair and may purchase some more of this fabric as I love how it coordinates.