How To Update A Secondhand Armoire

Restore a secondhand armoire for a child’s bedroom by replacing hardware and painting the inside a fun color with these tips.

Disclosure: I am a DecoArt blogger and this blog post has been sponsored.

Flynn’s bedroom is technically the study, which means he didn’t have a closet, just four walls, a door, and a window. So for the longest time I’ve been looking for the perfect armoire for his clothes. Until now all of his clothes had been folded and placed on one of the two bookshelves. Which meant he had toys and books everywhere.

I didn’t want to spend a fortune on a piece of furniture, so decided to stalk my favorite resale stores until one turned up. This past Memorial Day weekend I headed down south to San Diego to visit some of my old favorites in Poway.

I finally came across the perfect armoire at the Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church Resale Shop. The best part, all furniture in store was 50% off. So I scored this fabulous armoire for $62.50. And, it matches his bedframe fairly closely.

It had a broken drawer pull, was missing the hanging rail, and had a few dings and scrapes, but overall was in great condition. The one thing I knew I had to do was remove the gold hardware and replace it with satin chrome. So my first stop was to the hardware store for new hinges, door knobs and drawer pulls.

Then I had to find a hanging rail, which was actually a little tougher than I thought it would be. Next time I will just cut a wood rail to hang, but I did manage to find one adjustable hanging rail at the hardware store.

How to paint a wood armoire

Next, I decided to paint the inside. Flynn loves blue so I wanted to make the inside bright and colorful. I loved the contrast of the bright interior with the dark wood exterior.

First step was to remove the doors, shelves and drawers. Then I sanded and painted each piece with three coats of DecoArt Americana Decor Chalky Finish paint in Treasure.

The final step was to apply a varnish over the top. The painting took a couple of days because I wanted each coat to dry completely before applying the next one. On day three I added the new hardware and put the armoire back together.

Flynn is thrilled with the new armoire for his clothes. I can finally pull all of his costumes out of the garage and put them away. His books and toys finally have their home back on the bookshelves too.

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