Upcycled Advent Countdown Cabinet

So there is a fun­ny back sto­ry to how this cab­i­net came to be. If you know me then you know I like to online shop in the mid­dle of the night. I some­times wake up in the mid­dle­of th night and have trou­ble going back to sleep so I shop and day­dream until I get drowsy again. Weeeeeell, here’s the thing. I some­times buy things and com­plete­ly for­get about my com­mit­ment to pick them up or that I even bought it in the first place. Yeah, I know, weird huh? 

That is exact­ly what hap­pened here, with this cab­i­net. I saw this beau­ti­ful cab­i­net on Face­book Mar­ket­place, which my drowsy mid­night mom brain thought was a huge hang­ing cab­i­net for chi­na, and thought to myself, wow what a steal for $30! With­out hes­i­ta­tion or con­cern for the dimen­sions I imme­di­ate­ly agreed to pur­chase it. It was­n’t until I met the sell­er to pick it up that I real­ized my mis­take. It was tiny! Noth­ing at all what I had pic­tured in my head! Out of guilt I bought it any­way and spent the rest of my after­noon bummed that I had just wast­ed $30 on this tiny lit­tle thing that real­ly was­n’t all that remarkable. 

That’s when my brain went into over­drive. I was not about to let $30 just go out the win­dow with this one. I decid­ed it would make a per­fect lit­tle cab­i­net for an advent count­down. I had seen sev­er­al adorable DIY cal­en­ders on Pin­ter­est but nev­er a cab­i­net. So that is where our DIY begins.

I start­ed with prep­ping the peice for paint. Tak­ing the han­dles off the front, remov­ing the shelves and tap­ing off the win­dows with painters tape was all the prep I did for this step. I do recom­mentd at least light­ly sand­ing yolur sur­face for bet­ter paint adhe­sion. That did­n’t occur to me until I was well into the paint­ing step. Either way it turned out fine.

After com­plet­ing the prep work, I began paint­ing with a satin Valspar paint sam­ple from Lowe’s in Alabaster and a round brush. This par­tic­u­lar brush works great for fur­ni­ture pieces or pieces with detail­ing. It real­ly reach­es into the creas­es and lines of the wood. 

It took two coats, with time to dry in between, to ful­ly cov­er this cabinet. 

Once I got her paint­ed I of course had to dis­tress it for a more antiqued look. I used a very course sand­pa­per which is actu­al­ly intend­ed for a cir­cu­lar saw and gave her some character.

Once the out­side of the cab­i­net was com­plete, I began to make the actu­al count­down por­tion of the project.

Using tiny lit­tle seed bags from Ama­zon, I stamped the num­bers 1–24. I had a stan­dard ink pad and sil­i­cone num­bers on hand from pre­vi­ous projects. 

I mean how stinkin cute are these? I just adore the indus­tri­al, rough look of this font! 

In the end, I like to think of this as one of those “hap­py lit­tle acci­dents” This was not AT ALL what I had envi­sioned when I bought this cab­i­net! The moral of the sto­ry here…there is hope! Even for the biggest cas­es of buy­er’s remorse, you can still come out with a fan­tas­tic project! The extra spe­cial part about it is my hus­band has always want­ed a Christ­mas count­down advent cal­en­dar for our fam­i­ly. It was a tra­di­tion he very much enjoyed as a kid and I nev­er had one grow­ing up. We are so excit­ed to share this with our boys over the years and cre­ate a fun new tra­di­tion with our lit­tle fam­i­ly! Who knows, maybe it will be a heir­loom one day…

Made with Love, Kaycee

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