Old China Cabinet Gets Facelift

I mentioned a few days ago that I had started to work on this china cabinet (click here to read that post). We bought it back around 1986 from a little old lady whose husband had made it for her.  We paid $75, which was a lot of money for us.  I was thinking that for our Ozark house I wanted something older and more primitive to put dishes in, but frankly that is not in the budget right now.  

 After three coats of paint, I was ready to distress.  Except my palm sander was at our other house.

All I had was a sanding sponge.  I did what I could with that, but was not satisfied.  

Then I used a razor blade.  Better.  Then I used a butter knife, and got the best result.

 I then did a quick wipe-on, wipe-off with a coat of light stain.  This just aged the piece a bit,

and gave a little more color variation.  

I had purchased a roll of wallpaper off of ebay, to paper the back of the cabinet.

 Just to shake things up a bit.  

Unfortunately, when the paper came it was not pre-glued.  So I used clear polyurathane

(because that is what I had, and didn't want to spend any more money.)

It acted as a very good adhesive, though I wouldn't recommend it normally. 

I am not putting the shelves in or back panel on until the piece gets moved down south.

Which is also where my hardware stash is, so the drawer pulls will have to wait.

 So no staging for a final photo, but it still is a beauty.