Here is the before pictures, complete with the dirt and grime collected through the years. (I'm not so sure it was necessary to watermark these photos!)


Fast forward a few years, and Pottery Barn was selling a message center for holding keys, has a corkboard for posting things and provides storage for small necessities. I took on the challenge of making my medicine cabinet as useful as the Pottery Barn message center.
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via Pottery Barn |
The medicine cabinet started out in very poor shape....It's old and has lived a good, long life. There were layers of paint, a chipped finish, dents, and dings. The mirror shows signs of age and has a few scratches on it. A lot of this is hard to overcome, so I decided to "embrace the age" of the piece.
I started by cleaning the piece up and then sanding off the chipping paint. It would be impossible to get all the layers of paint and drips off the piece without massive amounts of stripping, so I decided that was part of the "age" I was embracing.
I began by painting the piece with two coats of silver Rustoleum paint....I like to paint all metal pieces with this regardless of the final finish just to protect the paint if later on the rust decides to peek through. I choose silver because I planned on distressing the piece after painting it and figured the silver would make it look like the original metal.

Then I painted on FOUR coats of white chalk paint with my Martha Stewart Foam Pouncers

Tomorrow I will share how I finished converting this into my own version of Pottery Barn's message center. What do you think so far?
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