Cabinet Makeover.......

I do a lot of work with essential oils, herbal tinctures, herbal teas and so on... and I need cabinet space for them. I like a cabinet that isn't very deep for this and have been watching Craigslist for the last year and not finding what I wanted.

 Finally, last year, I found a cabinet that would work, but it needed to be set on something. The only thing I had was an old vanity table, so we attached the two together and I have used it ever since. It has been helpful, but I really wanted to have a base cabinet that would give storage also. The vanity table worked, but not the way I wanted it to and the underside of it just seemed to collect... stuff.  :(

I began praying for a different base cabinet and searching Craigslist, thrift stores, garage sales and so on.  I looked for many months, but the only possibilities I found were gone too fast and so they obviously weren't for me..... and there were only a couple of those. For the most part, I didn't find anything that would even work for what I wanted..

Finally, I came across this cabinet.... I like this style of cabinet and though not exactly what I wanted, it seemed that it would work. 
My husband and son went to buy it for $25.00.

 My husband called me to tell me the doors were warped... that wasn't stated in the ad and it wasn't obvious from the pictures. He did go ahead and buy it anyway for $20.00. I figured it would work ....  When he got home, I saw that the doors really are warped, but it will work until I find something better.

This is the idea.... to put it under this top cabinet. I had found the top cabinet over a year ago... I had looked so diligently to find it... these types of cabinets are very difficult to find in my area... I know that for sure as I have watched carefully for them.

Anyway, the top cabinet will fit on the bottom one...


As you can see in the top cabinet, I have a lot of jars and bottles in there....

The new cabinet is just a bit deeper than the top cabinet, which I like since that will help it to be stable.  This is really important to me... my collection of essential oils, tinctures and more.. represent quite a bit of money and I do not want to lose any of them... or injure anyone either, by a cabinet falling over.  :)

I decided to try to stain the cabinet to make it closer in color, to the top cabinet. After looking, I realized that I only had less than half of a can of stain... a little tiny can.   It was a color that would work, though, so I started on it.

 Since the cabinet was unfinished, the stain just soaked in so fast... and the color seemed to be okay for what I needed.  This was a minwax stain so it left a bit of a sheen on the cabinet also, which I liked.


It was quite a difference....

Again, you can see the difference... stained and unstained.... I really like the stained side much better than the unstained one.

Seeing this picture made me realize that I will also need to stain the inside of the cabinet.

The backing of the cabinet inside has a lot of red in it, which really showed up after staining.

I DO like this little cabinet... I can picture old linens or lace draped over the doors while other linens are stored on the shelves.

 Hmmmmm... but that will have to wait. For now this will be for herbs and tinctures. :)

I took a shelf from the cabinet I already had and brought it down to the garage where I was staining... I was hoping they would match a bit.

It's not perfect, but it sure isn't bad either.  It will definitely work!  :)

We have small L-brackets holding the upper and lower cabinets together, just as we did when it was on the vanity table. The top fits perfectly on the bottom... exactly.  I was disappointed as it looks top-heavy now and the bottom cabinet really needs to be at least a couple of inches wider, but it is MUCH better than the vanity table, so we are using it this way for now... until I find a cabinet that will work even better.

I DO like the lower cabinet, though, and look forward to using it in other ways in the house, once it is no longer needed here. So, I will keep looking for these types of cabinets.  :)  They really are hard to find... it is easier to find the big deep armoire-type cabinets, but that isn't what I need.... so, I have decided to buy every shallow cabinet I find that is a good price, if I have the money on hand... if it ends up not to be what I can use, I can always sell it.  I decided this a year ago, and these two are the ONLY ones I have found with intense searching.... of course, I am looking only at the cheaper ones... I am not willing to pay hundreds of dollars. :) 

The top cabinet works well, but I had to pay quite a bit for it... much more than I wanted to pay, but I was getting desperate to have my essential oils and tinctures in a cabinet where they were visible and usable. I think I paid $45 or so for it, but it was the ONLY thing I could find.  After it was home, we realized it was an IKEA cabinet.

I hope to put fabric or lace behind the glass in the doors, but haven't done that yet. I will be doing future posts on organizing my essential oils and so on. I hope you will keep visiting my blog.... and I love hearing from you in the comments.

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