This post is linked up at the Trendy Treehouse Creative Share Blog Hop!

I knew that I wanted to keep the cabinets that came from my Gramma’s house.  When we first got them, the girls were fine with the “pumpkin” orange color of them.  They had lots of “girlie” stuff—nicknacks and other things—which went just fine with the orange.  For a few years, orange worked.

These days, it is a toss up between feelings of purging extra “stuff” that we always seem to accumulate, and wanting to keep the orange cabinets that I can remember clear back to when I was  younger than a toddler.  I have fond memories of them if only because when I played on the floor at my Gramma’s house, they took up the entire wall in her family room.

This is what I started with. The girls have had these in their bedrooms for about five years. Orange doesn’t work any more, and the girls are teens now who like a more modern look. But how to bring them into the 21st century?

I painted them black and replaced all the drawer pulls with new, brushed nickel knobs from Target (cheap!) .  All 11 of them! There were 3 sets of bases with hutches, and two chests—one with drawers and one with a lift top.  The paint wasn’t exactly what I would call cheap… in total I used 15 cans of gray primer spray paint, 12 cans of black satin spray paint, and a gallon of eggshell black paint. NOT cheap but it was cheaper than buying new furniture. (I keep telling my husband that.) Now it looks like they HAVE new furniture!

Where I really wanted to be able to splurge, I couldn’t.  I really, REALLY wanted to put white beadboard on the back of all of the pieces. I mean, BAD.  I priced it out, but at $29 a sheet for beadboard (and I would need 3) it was just too much.  I’ll let you see the end result and see if you can figure out what I used. (Yes, I still need to put the doors back on.)

Any ideas?

It’s wallpaper!  A roll of white, beadboard textured paintable wallpaper from the hardware store.  I’m going to leave it white.

$9 and I saved $87! I have a lot left over too.