See Part 2 (How to build the barn door) HERE.

Hey everyone! We have been working on redoing our kitchen for the past few months, and I am loving all the changes! It’s a small, galley style kitchen, and I wanted to add some interest to the dining area that flows on the end of it. We originally had a “hand me down” table there. But honestly, it took up too much space for our little house… and it was ugly. So we finally ditched it and came up with a better (and prettier!) solution for the space, as you can see from this post!

This big blank wall was a real eyesore so I thought it would be a great shelving opportunity. I also really wanted a barn door (or two!) in my house, but had nowhere to put one. This hutch was the perfect combination of storage & barn door eye candy.

My wonderful husband braved Lowes with me to get all the supplies… and yes, I said braved Lowes and I mean it! Taking a three year old and a seven month old anywhere public isn’t easy… especially when all your three year old wants to do is cry & run away from you… Haha! #reallife

But back to the tutorial. We built our shelving unit using plywood, 12×1″ and 8×1″ shelving boards (12″ ones for the outside frame, and 8″ ones for the inside to allow a sliding door), and 1×2″ boards for shelf supports.

This baby is 7 feet long, so we also bought L Brackets for extra support.

After my man did all the building, I broke out the paint brushes and took a leap of faith with color. We usually stick with natural wood, because I LOVE how it looks. But I have been dying to get into distressed furniture, especially since I have little ones who don’t get a long well with solid painted furniture. Might as well make it look intentional, right? Haha!

It was really scary to “destroy” this new build with paint, and my husband gave me the look…. you know “I think you are crazy, but I love you so… I’m not going to say anything” look. I couldn’t blame him for being skeptical though, I mean, look at it. Eww, right?

But I chugged along, went with my gut, and painted away.

I used blue in all the areas I knew I wanted to distress, and added a dark stain on the edges.

Then I painted over everything with white paint. Before it dried completely, I took a scrap board and roughed up the areas I wanted the distressing to show through. I put random dings and scrapes all over the place to give it a natural aged look.

At this point I was feeling better about my decision to paint the hutch. Leaps of faith have been mostly good to me so far.

And then I was done!

Time to decorate it!

Don’t the L Brackets and shelf supports look cute? I was really going for a chic farm vibe.

Look at how the pops of blue pull the colors out of my vases out. My poor husband married a vaseaholic. Ha!

I just LOVE this little corner of my house now. And it gives me SO much more storage (can’t ever have enough!)

Coming up next!

I am going to show how we built the Sliding Pallet Barn Door. It’s super easy, trust me. It took us under an hour start to finish.

Stay tuned!