Last summer I posted about our newly decorated Craft & Guest Room.  Not a ton has changed since then (still looking for a rug and window treatments…), but we did just complete what I consider a major upgrade in the room by painting my craft armoire.  Mr. Lemon and I purchased this armoire for our second apartment to house clothes.  It’s sturdy and has a ton of storage but doesn’t fit in our Master Bedroom (few updates on that room coming soon, too!) because of the sloped ceilings and since we no longer needed it for clothing storage, it has become craft storage heaven for the past year and a half.  Functionally, it’s been pretty darn amazing.  But the dark cherry-ish wood and brass hardware just weren’t doing it for me, so I decided we should paint it!

Here’s a before photo from last spring, after we’d already switched out the brass hardware for some girly faceted knobs and pulls from Target…

Mr. Lemon assured me that he wanted no part of this project.  Absolutely.no.part.  Not the dismantling, not the sanding, not the priming, not the painting and not the re-mantling (I don’t think that’s a word…).  So the project seemed to be a pipe dream.  But this spring we had the original wood floors in our house refinished and needed to move the behemoth armoire out of the craft room and into the garage.  With step one completed, I decided it was now or never for the armoire makeover.  We borrowed a hand sander from some friends, which I promptly broke (sorry, Mr. Abrahams…).  Then Mr. Lemon stepped in to help with the sanding.  And he helped paint on the primer.  And then he painted all four coats of lovely teal paint by himself.  And then he re-mantled it.  Yup, I married a good one, ladies.  #backoffhesmine

And guess what?!  I luuurve it!

If you’re looking to do something similar, we used this tutorial with Benjamin Moore’s Advance Paint (recommended by Young House Love for cabinets).  We experienced some scratches when putting it back together, but they were easy to touch up and basically the piece looks about a thousand times better.  And wait!  I saved the best for last!  The glorious houndstooth interior!  (Brought to you by Modge Podge and wrapping paper!  Yup, seriously people.)

Let the crafting commence!