Updating an Old Wood Medicine Cabinet with Paint
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I’m finally updating this old wood medicine cabinet we found for the cottage guest bathroom!
This vintage find doesn’t quite need a full makeover – just some extra love to make it shine and get it ready to be installed over at the cottage.
By the way, and in case you’re new here, we’re building a guest cottage on our property. It’s just a short walk down the gravel drive from our farmhouse.
The cottage will become my parent’s home once construction is complete.
If you haven’t seen it yet – head to this post for a mid-construction tour of the cottage in it’s current state!
Now back to the cabinet… The original paint color is what initially drew me to this piece! For some reason it looks a little lighter and a little more blue in these before photos.
I promise that has more to do with the lighting in this room when I photographed the cabinet. But it’s a beautiful shade of minty blue / sea foamy green in person!!
I love the original paint color on this vintage piece. But the cabinet itself a little dirty, and the sides have never been painted… so it’s in need of a little update.
I also love that little glass knob so that’s staying.
It’ll be a nice complement to the antique brass and crystal door knobs we’re incorporating all throughout the cottage!
I want to give the inside of the cabinet a fresh coat of paint because that green is VERY green.
This cabinet will house extra bathroom supplies, and things like band-aids, medicines, etc… so we want it to feel fresh and clean on the inside where all those items will live.
Alright, now that you’ve seen the cabinet inside and out… let me walk you through what I did to make it pretty again!
How I Color-Matched The Original Paint Color
I want to paint the sides of this old medicine cabinet to match the original color on the front.
So I ordered 5 different sample size paint colors from Fusion Mineral Paint to test out for the outside of the cabinet.
My goal is to get as close to that original paint color as I can!
Brook ended up being too green, and Heirloom ended up being too deep of a blue. So I ruled those colors out pretty quickly.
Both of those colors are beautiful on their own! They just weren’t the right colors for this piece.
Laurentien, Little Teapot and Inglenook ended up being the closest to the original color depending on which spot on the cabinet you look at.
Paint Colors I Sampled for this DIY
Since this old medicine cabinet is a vintage find, it has aged over time and so there is a lot of variation in color.
To recreate that same look – I decided to work in layers!
Nothing will make a freshly painted piece look more authentically old than layering your paint colors.
I started by dry brushing on the color Laurentien by Fusion Mineral Paint.
Laurentien is a beautiful soft green color that reminds me of the color of vintage jadeite.
After that dried first layer dried, I brushed on the color Little Teapot by Fusion Mineral.
Little Teapot is a beautiful light blue / minty blue color. My dry-brushed layer of it doesn’t do the color justice!
I know it looks a little rough at this stage, but you have to trust the process and just keep going.
For the third layer, I started dry brushing on the color Inglenook by Fusion Mineral Paint, and to me it just looked too muted.
It showed more grey-green in comparison to how bright and cheery Laurentien and Little Teapot looked next to it.
Laurentian by itself was too saturated.
Little Teapot by itself was a bit bright and a little darker and bluer than the original minty blue / green paint color.
Inglenook wasn’t working, but it was closer to the old paint color on certain areas where you see more signs of age and wear on the medicine cabinet.
So I went back to the drawing board!
Mixing Paint Colors to Create a Custom Color
I had a little tester pot of the color Casement by Fusion Mineral Paint on hand. So I decided to use that to create my own custom color mix.
Casement is one of Fusion’s true white paint color.
I’ve tested all the white paint colors from Fusion…
So if you ever need help narrowing them down be sure to check out this post where I shared my in depth color comparison of all the white’s from Fusion Mineral Paint.
I poured a little bit of all three colors – Laurentien, Little Teapot, and Inglenook – into the tester pot of Casement.
After a little trial and error, I think I got pretty close to the original paint color!
Here’s a peek at my custom mix…
And here’s another example of just how much the lighting in this room can change how the colors look in my photos!
See how the room is less shadowy in the background of the photo below?
The sun came out from behind a cloud and totally changed the look of the cabinet and the paint color in a matter of minutes.
But even with the weird lighting changes, you can still see how close it is to the original color on the front of this vintage medicine cabinet!
Once I was happy with the custom color mix I created, I layered it onto the cabinet letting some of the first few layers show through in random spots. Then I dry brushed a little bit of Inglenook on top for added dimension and depth.
Before I show you how the whole piece turned out, I want to give you a reminder of the before…
And here’s look at this old medicine cabinet after I updated it with a fresh coat of paint!
Now I did not paint the front of the cabinet. I only painted the side, the top, and the bottom of this piece where wood is shown in the before photos.
Well and I also painted the inside of the cabinet! I wanted to preserve the age and the patina on the front of this old piece. But the inside needed to feel fresh and clean.
So I painted the inside of the cabinet the color Casement by Fusion Mineral Paint.
There were a couple tough stains that bled through the paint. I ended up covering those with a thin coat of Zinsser’s Bin Primer which worked great!
Here’s a peek at the side of the cabinet.
I think you can really see the depth of color and all the layers from this angle!
My goal with this piece was to match the original paint color as close as I could. And I am so happy with the results!
I love how it turned out, and I can’t wait to see this vintage medicine cabinet inside the guest bathroom over at the cottage soon.
I think the color on this old piece will really complement the flooring and the lighting we chose for that space.
By the way, I shared the cottage mood boards in a recent blog post (including the mood board for the guest bathroom).
So if you’re loving how the cabinet makeover turned out, and you want a preview of where it’s going, go check out the post linked above!
Download Your Free Furniture Painting Guide!
And I can’t forget to tell you about my free furniture painting guide…
It’s a free resource I created just for you. And it’s full of my best tips and tricks for paint projects like the one I shared with you today.
If you haven’t gotten yours yet… scroll up, subscribe to the blog and I’ll send it right to ya!
I am so happy with how this project turned out! What do you think of it?
Paint is such an easy and affordable way to go about updating an old wood medicine cabinet, or really any piece of furniture.
And Fusion Mineral Paint is my go to paint for DIY’s and projects in our home!
for your next DIY
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Be sure to use my code when you order paint for your next paint project.
Thanks for stopping by the blog today to check out my latest DIY! I’ll be sure to share an update once we get the cabinet installed over at the cottage.
Until next time…
This turned out so cute! I love finding pieces of vintage furniture, fixing them up or just refreshing them and finding a place for them in my home! I’ve always stayed away from items that tend to look like they have a bit of cracked paint, did that give you any issues? I always worry that it’s either going to flake when I paint over it or after I do a new coat of paint. Thanks so much for sharing!