upcycling repurposed china cabinet

Are you ready to have your mind blown? This repurposed furniture idea will knock your socks off and it will give you all sorts of inspiration for upcycling old furniture.

What if I told you it was possible to create two pieces of furniture by repurposing a china cabinet.

Do I have your attention?

Good!

If you've followed us for for any length of time you know that we love to repurpose and refurbish furniture into show stopping pieces and we don't like to spend a lot of money doing it!

So, this upcycling furniture idea takes the cake! This budget friendly upcycled furniture makeover allowed us to create a china hutch and buffet from just one piece of furniture. No surgery was required. ;)

Today, we're going to show you how to create gorgeous repurposed furniture pieces from ONE china cabinet! You could create media consoles, buffets, or sofa tables from one china cabinet. That's two furniture statement pieces for the price of one!

Disclaimer: We received paint products from General Finishes to complete this repurposed furniture makeover. This post may contain affiliate links. Read our full disclosure here.

We're calling this upcycled furniture project"The Chesapeake Cabinet" which started out as an older beaten up china cabinet. It had chips, it had gouges and was collecting dust in a storage unit.

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This china cabinet was ideal because it came apart into two pieces. I love china cabinets that have an upper and a lower.

No. 1- They are easier to move and

No. 2- It's easy to add legs to each section to create a unique and stand alone piece.

The upper section of china cabinets make beautiful custom cabinets and the lower section (depending not the height) are the perfect size to repurpose into media consoles , buffets or sofa tables and sometimes bathroom vanities.

You can see additional examples of us doing that with this repurposed hutch or check out how we transformed the bottom of this china cabinet !

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In order to add legs we needed to beef up both the top and bottom of the cabinet.

When you turn your piece of furniture upside down you may notice that your molding is not flush with the bottom. (As in the bottom of your dresser or hutch or buffet is actually lower than your trim lines along the front and sides of your furniture.

That's okay, it's an easy fix! You'll simply measure and cut out a piece of wood and attach it to your base to create a new bottom.

We used 1/2" pine, cut the boards to size, then attached them with wood glue and finishing nails before attaching the legs.

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Now, let's talk about furniture legs for a minute. See the ones we used? Those aren't even "official" furniture legs. Those are fence posts from Home Depot.

I think I paid $6 per leg. It's a super affordable option if you aren't looking to spend a lot for legs.

Once the boards were secured, we attached the legs Home Depot fence posts to the bottom board with wood glue and screws. If you're looking for a wood legs Amazon carries a great variety of furniture legs .

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Have a great week!
Carrie || Thirty Eighth Street

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Carrie is the owner and author of Thirty Eighth Street, a blog dedicated to furniture story telling. Filled with tutorials, tips and lots of furniture before and afters, Thirty Eighth Street was created to encourage and inspire her readers to see the full potential in unloved and unwanted furniture. Carrie's work has been featured at HGTV, The Huffington Post, Hometalk, Annie Sloan, Country Chic Paint, Redbook, General Finishes and has been published in BH&G Magazine. Carrie has been a judge for The Fab Furniture Flippin Contest ™ and is a regular contributor for Country Chic Paint and Pure & Original.