Furniture Friday: Making It Work With a Restored Family Heirloom

I've been dreaming about this "Olofstorp" wall cabinet from IKEA for months and months!  It's beautiful and seemed to be a perfect fit for our guest bathroom.  That bathroom houses our medicine, sun screen, band-aids, etc.  The cabinet design was exactly what I was looking for: something solid (this is solid pine with steel hinges) and something farm-ish style.  Everything about it was perfect!  

The price though! The price.  As a family, we have been setting a budget and then discussing it together monthly.  While we could probably get this, there were so many other things that are more important, so to us, $199 was a little steep for just one small cabinet for the guest bathroom.   Plus, I have been trying to live by the adage: "Use it up, wear it out; make it do, or do without" I mean it's under the title of my blog page!  

Sadly, I sometimes get hung up on things that I think are perfect for a particular place.  So, it was hard for me to imagine anything else looking good in the spot I prepared for it.  But luckily my husband is really pretty good at this whole making do or doing without and he's also pretty amazing at interior decorating (which I never knew until recently when I had to be gone all day and we had about 30 people coming over in the evening; which put him in charge of cleaning and decorating - but that is another story for another day).  

Any-hoo, he suggested that I take an open shelved cabinet that I inherited from my grandmother and put it in guest bathroom.  I kind of rolled my eyes and hemmed and hawed for a bit.  Finally I decided that it would be fine to at least try it and if I don't love it after a while, then I'd just save up and get the Olofstorp.  

For a long time I figured that I would need to go to a store and buy some cute, yet useful, glass and tin containers in which to hold all of the medicine.  

I finally went with the old standby - the thrift store!  

I spent $16 on baskets, glassware, wood, and a tin.  I already had both colors of spray paint on hand, so that didn't cost me anything.  

Two white glass vases, a wooden bowl, a wooden basket, the red tin, and the square basket. The clear glass I found with candles in them in front of the glass recycling container last year.

All the hidden medicine. 

 

Each item repainted and ready for display.