Thank you so much Jen at IHeart Organizing and Mandy at House of Rose for hosting link parties that are the perfect timing for this project and my first blog posts!
We are not designers. We are not DIY experts. We've been renovating a pretty big house for the last 6 years, and this is a neverending budget, even if we do not splurge.
We are not designers. We are not DIY experts. We've been renovating a pretty big house for the last 6 years, and this is a neverending budget, even if we do not splurge.
So, when it appeared that our bedroom seriously lacked storage for our ever-expanding piles of clothes, we wanted to re-use something we already had.
Cultural note: big masters bedrooms with ensuite bathroom and walk-in closets are not the norm in France. They've gotten more and more popular for the last few years but most of the time that's only possible when you build a house from scratch. Our bedroom is quite small (per US standards) and has no built-in closet. A walk-in closet is actually called "un dressing", because apparently, "une pièce pour s'habiller" (lit. "dressing room") doesn't sound as fancy!
We only had a simple, boring Ikea Malm white chest of 6 drawers, and a big very old Ikea closet in my study.
So, off we went deep into the basement where we store tools, paint, old furniture and damaged / unused items from our last house, and scavenged a set of 3 kitchen cabinets (probably from Ikea as well) that used to be on the wall in our previous kitchen.
They were a nondescript faded beige color, so we started by painting them with a special resin paint (this brand , but there are probably tons of similar products everywhere) in a charcoal color. It's amazing how it sticks to surfaces that are usually impossible to paint over (our cabinets were not hardwood, but cheapo mdf coated in strange plastic-feeling material), and it really adds texture.
You're supposed to finish with a special transparent resin to protect the furniture from water, grease etc, but since we were lazy using it in a bedroom, we decided to skip that step.
We changed the handles for nicer ones (but they are still kitchen handles) and this is what we got:
The wooden matriochka dolls on top were bought in Russia and Poland.
We used two faithful Expedit cubes complete with baskets to store more items and simply put the cabinet on top of them.
I was afraid it looked too much like kitchen furniture / old-fashioned kitchen cupboards, but it turns out we're very happy with this (very) budget-friendly option, until we find something else we really like.
The opposite side of our bedroom has a dark grey wall that plays well with the charcoal tone of the new cabinet.
Turns out we really had too much paint left, and since it's mixed with resin it needs to be used quickly before it dries up. So we ran around the house for a whole day, repainting every old or ugly cupboard / chair / picture frame / bathroom furniture we could think of.
So, budget project? Check. More storage? Check. Happy us? Definitely!
MJ
