How to update old cabinets for free

The shock. The horror. Folks, don’t bother adjusting your monitors. This is what a bathroom that hasn’t been updated in 40 years looks like. If you recall from my recent bathroom project this room got a whole new look! With the budget being limited, I wanted to make sure my money went far, so I splurged in some areas and cut corners in others.

Without replacing this 1970s cabinet, I gave it a whole new look. And besides a bit paint I already had on hand, it didn’t cost me anything.

Before

After

how to update old cabinets at virtually no cost

The quality of vintage cabinet doors is hard to match these days. Most cabinetry today is made of particle board, but old cabinets are usually hardwood. The style on these midcentury doors is sooooo charming, but wasn’t right for this room design. I needed something sleek and modern to balance all the other bold choices in the room, so I needed to give this cabinet a new look. And it needed to be cheap!

Also, because I couldn’t find replacements for this type of door hinge locally, I needed to reuse these hinges that had been painted over. Yikes!

How did I do it?

I flipped the doors around. That’s it!

Here’s how I did it in steps:

remove doors at hinge, along with door knob
fill in all the holes with spackle and sand smooth
install doors inside out with the hinge now on the side where the cabinet knob was. You will then install your knob on the side the hinge was on previously.

This works in most cases where:

the doors are hardwood - they need to be sanded, so cheap doors with paper-like veneers won’t work.
the frame is recessed
the doors are painted (paint is necessary to cover all the spackle as you would have a hard time matching up stains over parts where the holes were)
you like the back side better than the front. Even if it’s not a flat panel on the reverse like mine (more often than not, I see a shaker-style shape on the interior of most cabinet doors that are not as old as mine) - whatever it is, ask yourself if you like the shape better than the front. If the answer is yes, flip it!

To bring new life to the hinges, I simple painted over them with this pen ! (do this part when you have the hinges removed - super easy! I didn’t even remove the old paint, just went over those suckers with this pen))