Upcycled Shelf Unit

Think Shabby and Chippy

This solid maple shelf unit is well traveled.  Someone left it behind in a house I rented in Dawson Creek.  At that stage, it had two little doors which looked like shutters.  I took those off, intending to rework them to have glass in instead.  They were never seen again.

Since my style these days is rustic and shabby I decided that I would paint this beast (horrors!  Paint solid wood?)

I also thought it needed something a little more, shall we say, unique?

So, the piece was sanded a little to rough up the finish which is some kind of polyurethane sealer.  I like my velvet finish interior latex paint, so that's what I painted it with.

Halfway through that, I had a brainstorm.  Why not add some decorative trim that I salvaged from a fancy mirror to emulate a French country look?

A trip to the greenhouse was a dead end.  No longer did I have the little wings that I was looking for.  Instead, all that was left was one corner piece, not what I had envisioned.

I looked at it, and decided that I could cut it up to be a straight piece to go on the top of the shelf unit.  Here's what it looked like after I cut it up a bit;

I discovered that you can do curved cuts with the scroll saw.

Temporarily fitted together...

Then the pieces were glued in place on the unit, and left to dry while I put on a second coat of white paint. 

I will take a bit of sandpaper to the fancy ornate trim to take off some of the white, leaving the gold paint visible.

Of course, this is all temporary because my kitchen is a work in progress.  Who knows what the final result will be?  For now, eclectic, country and shabby is the main theme.