The Amazing Armoire Makeover

I LOVE armoires!  I think they are pretty and interesting and offer great storage behind closed doors.  I picked up this armoire for FREE from a school that was closing. Originally I was going to use it for supplies for a preschool I was starting. But we moved and the whole preschool thing didn't happen.  So I started using this as my craft cupboard.  It's perfect to hold all of my projects and supplies. 

Well, the brown just wasn't doing it for me, but I never got around to redoing it until now (a year after I first acquired the beaut).  It was suppose to be a quick, easy paint job.  But when is it ever easy?  The paint started chipping and I had to strip her down to the wood.  She had about four coats of various paint on her.  Can I just say that I HATE stripping paint?!  This whole process took way too long because I just didn't want to do it.  I started with a spray paint stripper, but it didn't do very much. So I picked up this awesome gel type paint stripper. 

It worked amazingly!  Plus, it smelled good (perfect since I was removing the paint from this thing inside the house).  Anyway, after lots of paint scraping and some sanding she was ready to be made over. Here she is primed.

 I added crown molding to the top.  She was just too plain jane to begin with.  Then I painted. 

And then I stenciled the doors.  After that I painted and wiped off a glaze over everything and finished with a coat of poly. 

 And finally, I added some bling in the form of hardware.  Phew!  Just typing it all makes me tired.

My husband is thrilled that I am done.  He's not a fan of the mess I make with my projects (neither am I ).  I'm thrilled that it's done because I was getting tired of working on it and it looks sooooo much better then it did.

Here is the before and after:

That's what I call an extreme makeover!

I'm linking this baby up to the parties featured on our left sidebar.  Check them out!