CHEAP China Hutch Makeover

I’m not a big DIY’er, though my husband is. We bought this china hutch off of Craig’s List for about $40 months and months ago with the idea that we’d repaint it and put it in the dining room so I could finally (after years) display the china passed down to me from my mom. It turned out to be a super easy project… for my husband. I have to confess that I did very little besides helping to carry it up and down the steps. DH pulled out the shelves and took off the doors before I snagged a before picture, but you get the idea. It’s laminate wood hutch with glass shelves and doors in the upper portion.

The first step of this project was to remove the doors, hardware, and shelves. This only required a screwdriver and took just a few minutes. Next we sprayed primer on everything. This is an important step for making sure the paint sticks to the laminate. Spraying it on was very straightforward and easy. We used Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch 2x Ultra Cover primer*. It says it creates a tight bond for a top coat of paint.

As you can see in this picture, we taped paper over the glass on the doors, which made painting them a breeze. We just used painter’s tape and some leftover packing paper we had lying around.

After the entire piece was primed, we let it dry overnight. The next morning DH sprayed on the paint and let it dry. One improvement we made was to replace the backing with a stronger piece of board. We cut it to size and painted it a moss green.

Once that was dry we nailed it onto the back of the hutch.

We discussed getting new hardware, but after looking at prices decided to just clean up what we already had and put them back on. Remember – this was intended to be a super cheap revamp. when everything was dry and screwed back together we hauled it upstairs to the dining room. I’m really pleased with how it turned out. We spent less than $50 on everything and got a “new” piece of furniture for the dining room!