DIY barnwood cabinet

. . . . wherein "DIY" really means "do it with someone who really knows what he's doing" (thank you, Tom).

I don't have many photos - and the ones I do have are courtesy of my phone (and therefore of sub par quality). I'm eager to show you nonetheless. MQ has some great ones from the building process but I'm too impatient to wait for him to upload those for me.

Back story: About 2 years ago we were in search of a bathroom cabinet to help out our lack of storage situation. We got this bookcase from Ikea - with this door. It's a glass door and we covered the inside with fabric. It was decently cute and functional and cheap. Perfect.

The bookshelf has failed us miserably. I blame it on the bathroom humidity that has made it incredibly unstable.
So we set out to make a new one.

The plan: make it the same dimensions so we could reattach the door to the new one. I'm not an open shelving fan, to say the least. Books I can handle, everything else needs to be away. Behind a door.

Here's the old door fabric ready for a change.

And this is the cabinet.

We brought it home and only needed some polyurethane (several coats) so it sat in our dining room for about a week as Michael went to town.

(Isn't it cool, by the way?! I'll give the full run-down on the process when I get photos ready, but we're so happy with how it turned out!).

And then I came home from school on Monday to find her completed (full with the new door fabric)!

 . . . . . . . And we're not sure we like it.

Well, we love the cabinet; that part we know. We do not love the door. It looked much more rustic and barnwoody (that's a word, right?) pre-door. And now - eh. It's decent.

But what's an enclosed-storage-loving girl to do?

I'm thinking about some baskets. We can't just leave it as open randomness (MQ's many a hair products are nearly overflowing from his shelf in there anyway) but what about something like this:

Or this?

I don't love either of those options. I'm looking for an industrial looking, metal bin. Silver, preferably. And I think I could live with that. One per shelf.

Eh. In the meantime I'll settle for the door. Be on the lookout for us.

In other news . . . .

We have a similar cabinet in the kitchen and so I just couldn't resist giving her a makeover as well:

The before . . . . .

 . . . . and after

As a snack cabinet, she definitely needs those doors and I am loving the new purple. I know you can't tell in the bathroom cabinet photo but that new fabric is purple as well.

Not sure how I got that one passed our home decor president (i.e. MQ) but I'm proud of that one.