DIY Farmhouse armoire

Are you ready for this picture??? Its a throw back to 2010. Its a terrible, terrible picture but I wanted to share with you how far this piece has come. We were at a friend’s house that year near Slaughters, KY. We had gone up that weekend to stay with them and went to an auction in an old carriage house from the 1800s. Here we were in the middle of starting our house build and buying furniture…ha. I’m one of those who gets the cart before the horse sometimes. So when we bought this piece and a mantle, our friends offered to store the piece for us till we had some place to put it. It was huge and extremely heavy, especially when they had to carry from upstairs over the railings. It was really awesome to see the history of this old carriage house and then to bring these 2 pieces back to our home. I love the history and story of where pieces come from to me that means more than hey I bought it at the store. So this is where this piece all started for us.

So now that you’ve seen this awkward picture of me, you can see the before of how this piece has transformed over time. The first thing Barry did was take out the panels to add in glass. We cleaned it up really well and painted with a good coat of oil based paint. This was before chalk paint was even a thing around here. He fixed wooden shelves to go inside since it was used an armoire for hanging clothes. We had a couple of pieces of glass cut from the glass shop for a few dollars. It has stayed this way until here recently. I was tired of the black and grabbed some fusion mineral paint. Keep scrolling to see how it looks today.

This was my inspiration photo that I loved the moment I saw it and added it to Pinterest. This is a little darker than I wanted, however, so I chose a putty color (greige) and a champlain (creamy white) for the inside. The brand I use is Fusion mineral paint and have on hand. The Fusion color similar in this pic would probably be Sacred sage.

These are some in process shots that I took while I worked on it.

I eventually painted my walls in our family room so they are no longer this taupe color. I painted them in Benjamin Moore white dove so it makes this piece stand out so much more.

Here are some shots on how I styled the cabinet in a farmhouse style. I layered in a shiplap frame, platters, cutting boards, and plates in first and then worked my way out. I worked with adding in layers of height with the scales and stacking books. The greenery makes the styled cabinet have life in certain places on each shelf. If you need help styling shelves, you can go here to the another blog post.