The Olde Farmhouse on Windmill Hill: bobvilla

If you follow me on Facebook, you saw a sneak peak of a project I started last week. I had thought to have a reveal by last weekend but that didn't happen (I attended the World's Largest Yard Sale instead). So this week, I was going to have a full reveal but my drill died. :( I can't function without my drill. So while I'm waiting on my new drill to arrive, I thought I would do a partial reveal. The full reveal will wait until the bathroom reveal but this will give you a better idea of what I did with that 'Apothecary' glass.

Backing up a bit....

I took this,

which I found on Craigslist for free, and made it into a bathroom vanity.

Vanity Sneak Peek

Due to a lot of rotten wood around the bottom, I decided not to use the ends.

(That faux grain-painting hides some gorgeous old wood!)

BUT, I kept the wood that I removed (never know when you might need some old wood).

That wood came in handy when I got the brainstorm to make an apothecary styled medicine cabinet door. The recessed panels you see in the picture above slipped right out leaving a framework that had a groove in it. That groove was perfect for holding a pane from an old basement window that I turned into an apothecary sign (using my Silhouette Cameo).

To explain why the signs says what it does:
DH's name is Andrew and our living children are all boys.
1802 is the street address of the first house we lived in after we were married.

I re-sized the frame to fit the glass and this became to top of my medicine cabinet door. I used miscellaneous pieces leftover from the vanity project to create a faux apothecary chest in the bottom part of the door.

It was very hard to get a decent picture on this cloudy day.
Hopefully, this gives you the idea. When it's hung on the wall,
I will post additional pictures.

I wanted the 'drawer fronts' to look used (worn and banged up).

For them, I used the long trim board from along the bottom front of the cabinet. This had also gotten wet at some point which had darkened it but it wasn't rotten yet. The bottom of this board that had gotten banged and worn along the floor became the top edges of the 'drawers'.

After cutting all my pieces and fitting them together like a puzzle, I glued, then nailed them to a piece of 1/4" plywood (that I rescued from Uncle's burn pile).

I used Minwax Provincial stain over the whole thing which beautifully brought out the wood grain. After that dried, I applied clear wax to seal it.

Lastly, I applied the porcelain knobs from Menards ($1.10 each) to the center of each 'drawer front'. I'm not wild about how bright white they are. I'd have liked something a little more 'old' looking. I actually found a set that had enough on eBay but the cost defeated the whole 'frugal' idea. :D

So that they were all placed the same, I made a template and just laid it on the wood and drilled through my hole. Like so:

So that's my "apothecary" medicine cabinet door. I will show you the whole cabinet in another post. (I need my drill to finish it!!)

Total cost of this phase of the project:
12 knobs @ $1.10 each = $13.20
(Everything else was supplies I had on hand.)

UPDATE: The completed project can be viewed HERE.

From the Farmhouse