I wasn’t going to share another piece of furniture in this series until next week.  BUT, the linen closet here at the cottage is done.  And I couldn’t wait to share it with you.  So, I figured, why not?  You need to know the history behind this piece.  I already shared the story behind our medicine cabinet and our antique wardrobe, so check them out if you missed those posts.

Since this cottage will be Deb’s workshop in the future, we wanted to do the least amount of work to it converting it to a workshop when that time comes.  So we didn’t add any extra closets, etc, because we really love to use large cabinets for storage.  We have a gorgeous bathroom vanity which I will be sharing soon, but we needed more storage for things like extra sheets, towels, etc. 

Large pieces of furniture always work well for this type of thing.  Now it was a matter of choosing which one would work.

The Story Behind the Pieces: Our Linen Cabinet

I would say it was last year at this time.  We received a message over on Instagram asking if we would be interested in this antique wardrobe.  The lady owned storage units and one of the units had this antique wardrobe left in it.  She knew we loved these type of pieces so she said we could have it.  Because it needed a lot of work.  The wood on the door was broken in several pieces and it was missing the two bottom drawers.  

It was freezing cold and raining when we got there.  We weren’t quite sure what in the heck we would do with it and where we would put it.  So, we ended up using it in the office at the rental to store our paint clothes etc.  Once we decided we needed a linen cabinet here at the cottage, I just knew this would be a perfect piece.

Converting the Wardrobe into the Linen Cabinet

First things first.  Deb needed to repair the broken door.  And, figure out what to do about the missing drawers.  I didn’t want baskets like a lot of people do and I also didn’t want Deb to have to put too much work into this piece because we have plenty of more pressing things going on.  ???? She decided to cut out fake drawer fronts and added a knob and then attached them directly to the piece.  She added three shelves for storage.

The next question is if we should refinish this piece of paint it……. I made the decision to paint it white.  Because the repair work Deb did on the doors wasn’t going to stain the same color as the rest.  And, same goes with the wood she added as the fake drawer fronts.    They needed painted because it would be very hard to match the stain on old wood vs new wood.  We’ve tried it many times.

We added two new knobs on the doors and I used rub and buff on the little metal key hole to spice those up.

I absolutely LOVE how this piece turned out and it works so perfect for what we needed it for…. our linen cabinet.

What do you think?