Chinoiserie Style Painted Cabinet DIY

I have been hoping to find a beautiful chinoiserie style armoire on a thrifting trip. I originally hoped to find a black one and after looking for years it became clear that finding a big, beautiful lacquered armoire was a difficult ask for a thrift find. I have looked at several along the way that were generally pretty expensive and I also realized they might not be sturdy enough to hold the things that I needed to store. 

This white cabinet came from a big box store decades ago and stores my art and craft supplies. Collectively they are heavy. This cabinet is also deep which is a bonus. It was originally in the basement but when I morphed the room upstairs into the "Garden Room," as I call it, I brought it upstairs which was much more convenient. I knew it wasn't attractive and the search for the chinoiserie armoire began. No luck on that front. I had considered a couple of options to make it look better while looking for the elusive armoire but nothing really grabbed me. 

(Here it was - big and white!)

Reality set in - 1. I don't think any of the traditional chinoiserie cabinets will be large enough or strong enough. 2. Even if I find one they are thousands of dollars and I'm not willing to spend that. 3. I will keep looking but I cannot look at that big white box anymore. 

I popped on to Pinterest and started looking at antique and vintage chinoiserie cabinets with the thought of doing something to the cabinet to improve it. The first thing that happened is that a lot of beautiful green chinoiserie cabinets popped up and I became obsessed with the idea of doing something green. After all, there are green velvet curtains in the room already along with other green touches to perpetuate the "Garden Room" feel. See my inspiration board here.

The second thing that happened is that I realized that some of the pretty chinoiserie cabinets were made by American furniture companies like Thomasville and Baker and they were stenciled! I was on to something. I ordered about 20 dollars of chinoiserie stencils and pulled out my paint deck and some Rub and Buff and decided to see if I could give this old white cabinet a "faux" chinoiserie finish. 

This Thomasville Mystique Vintage Handpainted server was on Chairish for $2200.00. 

Look - it's stenciled! So I decided to combine the looks using stencils and gold paint. I decided to try Rub and Buff first because I like the look of its finish, I was going to be stenciling on an upright piece of furniture and it doesn't drip and I thought sponging it on would give me the look I was after. 

I decided on SW Garden Grove. The name seemed an omen and I wanted a green that would blend well with the other greens already in the room. I lightly sanded the cabinet and then primed it. Once that dried I rolled on 2 coats of the green paint using a sponge roller specifically for smooth services. I let that cure a couple of days before beginning to stencil. 

I used a sponge that I cut into small squares to stencil with. I also used a foam "spouncer" from the craft store for some smaller spaces.

I decided to start with the sides and figure out the best way to layout the designs and see how the Rub and Buff was going to do before committing to the front cabinet doors. 

At this point I'm just winging it with the layout. It would be easy to lay out the design on brown paper to be sure it was balanced and worked well with the dimensions but I just went for it. I figured that by the time I got to the front I'd have a good feel for how to stencil with the Rub and Buff, drying times, etc.

And then on to the front of the cabinet. 

I'm very pleased with how the cabinet is turning out. The Rub and Buff gives just the right amount of texture and shine and goes on easily without seeping under the stencil. It does take quite a bit so I had to order more tubes!

This is turning out to be a really fun project! I think it has vastly improved a $100.00 utility cabinet. I did pause here and order one more stencil that had some more variety to choose from including pagodas in a couple of smaller sizes to mix in. If I were covering a smaller space like a dresser front I probably would have just repeated the designs like some of the chests on my Pinterest board. 

I'm spending a lot of time sitting on the floor stenciling and looking up. I decided to start at the top and to "loosely' create a scene that seemed like we are peeking through the cherry blossoms at a little village scene. 

I will link (at the end of the post) the stencils I purchased, the cost and my thoughts on how much I used/needed them in case you decide to try your own chinoiserie furniture dupe!

I base coated the handles (which are just plastic) with gold spray paint and then gave them a coat of Rub and Buff after that so the gold matched.

Finished! And Cooper approved. I am starting to put the room back together after completely emptying it out to paint the wood floors and the cabinet. More to come!

What I used for the cabinet:
Secret Garden Toile Stencil $9.00  I used this stencil a great deal. It had multiple pagodas and elements that I worked in throughout the pattern.

Koi Fish Stencils $9.00 The stencil designs are beautiful and you get a lot of size variety in the package. I used these along the bottom of the "scene" I created and I don't think they are a huge bonus to this cabinet but on another project they could be great. 

These three stencils were the workhorses of this project and I paid about $18 for all three. Here,  here and here.

Geisha stencil.

This is the Rub and Buff I used. It took more than I estimated but I love the finished look and it was easy to control on the vertical surface.

Greenhouse At Night

I love to sit in my little greenhouse in the evening - it's the blue hour. The sky is a deep, rich blue but the lamp brightens up the inside and its so peaceful. 

I recently moved this very old green shelf into the back of the greenhouse. We salvaged it over 30 years ago from a local 100+ year old form house that was going to be demolished. I love the scallops. It reminds me of the British Auricula Plant Theatres. Someone wondered if I might paint it to match the potting benches but I like the mix of multiple shades of green out there - just like nature. 

This little greenhouse was an inexpensive Amazon purchase a few years ago and it has been worth every penny and more. I had the old bricks, we used scrap lumber to build the benches, one at a time until the configuration held maximum plants for overwintering and then everything but the plants is thrifted. I could spend hours out there. It's a little "escape' just a few feet from my backdoor!

 

June's Morning Light

 

The early morning light in the early summer has a beautiful, soft quality that you just don't get later in the season.

On the screened porch.

The Evolution of the Garden Guy

Many years ago (about 30 years ago because Mollie was a preschooler) we went to an amazing garden show in the old Sears Building in Atlanta. It was filled with the most beautiful gardens created in the warehouse like space. One of the gardens that had been created was home to a garden guy made from terra cotta pots. He was so much fun and Mollie loved him. I was inspired to try and recreate one for our backyard garden. I did and he was around for quite a few years. Funny enough no one can remember what happened to him or why he was dismantled!

This spring when I was cleaning out for the new potager I uncovered a lot of terra cotta pots and I thought it might be time for Garden Guy 2.0. I had used a bunch of the pots to make a Christmas Tree outside the greenhouseChristmas Tree outside the greenhouse in December so I had a pretty good collection of pots to choose form. I had some wire and a pool noodle to use for spacers. I just needed to grab some wire cutters and a serrated knife. 

This is actually the old metal chair (all those pots get heavy) that the original pot guy sat in. I made a hole in the center and put a piece of rebar thru the pot holes and the hole in the chair to stabilize the whole thing and keep it from toppling over and breaking the pots. I also did this because I did not want to permanently glue the pots together. Everything is either wired or slipped over the rebar pole. It will come apart easily if I decide to dismantle him at some point.

I think the pots that form the body are 12 or 14 inch terra cotta pots. 

The rebar stabilizer is not noticeable once the guy is all put together and planted. 

The pot for the head is slightly smaller than the 2 for the body. I was using pots I had on hand. I slid them on the rebar to be sure the proportions worked and then removed them while I wired the legs on. 

I doubled the wire just to be sure and wrapped it around the pole under the bottom "body" pot. Using a serrated knife I cut spacers from the pool noodle. 

Then I simply threaded a pot followed by a spacer on to the wire to create legs. The pool noodle spacers hold the pot in place. You could skip the pacers but you would need quite a few more pots for each leg or arm.

You just keep adding pots until the legs are the length and configuration you want. 

I turned some pots the opposite way to make "knees" that I could plant  in.

After the legs were completed I added the top body pot and began wiring the arms in place. Having the rebar is helpful in securing the arms. The clay pots are a bit heavy when strung together. 

After both arms were secured I slid the pot that makes his head onto the rebar. You can see that I turned one of the arm pots so that I could plant in it if I wanted to. 

I hammered the rebar into the ground a little more once everything was all wired together. 

And then it was time to give this garden guy some hair. I had this asparagus fern already. I ended up dividing it in half with my serrated knife and planting it to each side of the pot so it would definitely hang down like hair!

He fits right in by the greenhouse and the old shed. 

Let me know if you create a garden guy to keep you company in the garden.

P.S. I have used smaller pots to make a small scale, tabletop version of these for a garden party tablescape and they are just as much fun!