Painted Oak Cabinet Makeover

Who’s in the mood for a great painted furniture makeover today?

If that’s you, I’ve got good news! I’ve been holding onto this oak cabinet makeover for a while now, but today is the day to finally show it off.

Check out the great bones on this piece?! This oak cabinet is a classic example of a great paint project–good wood that can be refinished many times over (yep, paint today, then strip and re-stain it later if you want!), sturdy and still functional, with nice details that will shine with a bit of paint.

I almost always choose milk paint for my oak furniture makeovers, mainly because I think it does a great job highlighting the pretty wood grain and the look of milk paint fits well with older style furniture.

Wanna see some more oak pieces painted in milk paint? You can here, here, and here!

Materials Needed

Here’s a list of the materials I used for this project:

Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint in Mora
Fusion Mineral Paint Casement
Miss Mustard Seed’s Clear Furniture Wax
Redesign with Prima’s Delicate Fleur Transfer
Flat paintbrush and small artist’s brush
Fusion’s TSP Alternative
Fine grit (320+) and Coarser grit (180) sandpaper
Lint-free cloth

The Painting Process

I find painting oak furniture with milk paint really easy! Most always, the paint soaks right down into the oak and I don’t have any issues with adhesion, but it’s always good to still do a bit of prep if you’re concerned at all about getting too much chipping with your milk paint.

To prep this piece, I cleaned it with Fusion’s TSP, and scuff sanded the top only with the 180 grit sandpaper. I left the rest of the body unsanded because I wanted to let the milk paint chip and do its thing; but on the top, I wanted to make sure I got nice, solid coverage.

I then mixed up my milk paint, which is a gorgeous shade called Mora. It’s a very faint color, with a tad bit of blue and green in it. Since it’s such a light color, it did take 3 coats to get the coverage I was going for on this piece.

Once my last coat was dry, I used the fine-grit sandpaper to sand the whole piece smooth and distress some along the edges. Then I hand-painted on a few details on the door fronts using some white Fusion (Casement) and a small artist’s brush.

At this point, I thought the front still looked a bit too plain, so I cut up a few pieces of Prima’s Delicate Fleur transfer, and created a small floral bunch design with the individual pieces (want to see more on how to apply a transfer? Check out my youtube video here).

Once the transfer design was finished, I brushed a thin coat of Clear Wax over the whole piece, then buffed it back with my lint-free rag after about 10 minutes.

After Photos

Here it is all finished!

It has a real feminine vibe now, with the soft color and floral design. And like I said, the Mora is a very faint color, and looks white until you put it up next to something that is a true, bright white.

The lighting the day I took these photos wasn’t the greatest, but I hope you can still get a feel for how you can use paint to soften up a piece and give it a whole new feel.

And if you’ve never tried milk paint before, the next old oak piece you find, you should give it a try!