Medicine Cabinet Face Lift

 As you know, Mitch and I have been updating our new home. My recent undertaking consisted of giving our upstairs bathroom's medicine cabinet a face lift. Since we started painting the trim in our house white, the wooden cabinet looked a little out of place.

The above picture gives you a 'before' glimpse. You can see the pink wall color needed to go, and ASAP! What you don't see is the disgusting wallpaper boarder we had to scrap off the top of each wall. ICK! So anyway, something had to be done...

What you'll need:

*paint

*paint tape

*paint brush

*contact paper

*tape measure

*X-acto knife or box cutter

*razor blade scraper

*lots of patients

I started off sanding all the wood, taping around the cabinet as not to get paint on my NEW grey walls, and painting the inside portion of the cabinet that wouldn't be covered with contact paper. See the wooden pieces covering the ends of each mirror at the top and bottom? Don't worry about taping that part of the mirrors off when you're ready to paint. Several expert painting sites suggest it's a waste of tape and time. The paint scrapes right off with a razor blade scraper.

Here's a razor blade scraper if you aren't exactly sure what they are... Mitch had no idea what I wanted him to buy when he ran to Menards... so naturally I had to go back and this is the one I bought for roughly $4.  

I had previously selected contact paper (as mentioned in my post Fashionably Hide Your Toilet Paper). I got mine at TJ Maxx for $5.99. I had some issues with this well-constructed cabinet--I was unable to take the mirrors off. This left me with the dilemma of being unable to take the shelves out. ugh! I had to put the contact paper in by using long skinny strips instead of one giant piece. This probably wouldn't have been such a big deal, but I chose contact paper with an intricate design. Lining everything up was a pain!

I started by measuring the width of the inside of the cabinet and the distance between each shelf (which varied in my case). I cut the first strip of contact paper, put it inside, and placed it where I needed it to be. 

  

 

Now for the hard part... peeling off the back and making the contact paper stick without having air bubbles all while keeping it lined up with the bottom of the cabinet. I started by peeling the contact paper backing up as I smoothed the sticky side down to the cabinet

  

This video shows the process if you need more of a visual aide. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42vIb1oVg7w&feature=youtu.be

The first strip of contact paper wasn't as difficult as the rest because I didn't really have to line anything up except making sure the contact paper stayed in a straight line.

 

 

 Once reached the right side of the cabinet, I found I had cut my contact paper about 1/4 inch too long. Simple fix. I just took my box cutter and trimmed off the excess.

 I kept working in small sections all the way to the top of the cabinet making sure I had the pattern lined up and my seams were behind the shelves. 

After several hours of tediously painting and lining up the patter of the contact paper... and several days in between... I finally finished my medicine cabinet face lift. I think it turned out quite swell. I hope yours does too! 

Happy crafting!
-Melanie