Decorating Your Homestead

Learn how we easily transformed a vintage kitchen cabinet to a decorative bookshelf using a can of paint and wallpaper.

Make sure you scroll to the bottom of this post to grab your 5 FREE home decor printables.

There is always some kind of project happening at the Christy homestead. That being redoing our floors, mulching our garden, building a trellis or learning something new like how to make homemade soaps. The list of tasks is never ending.

One of my favorite projects to tackle is decorating our home. When we moved into our house in 2018, I had this expectation that my house would instantly become a home designed by Joanna Gaines on Fixer Upper. New flooring, great lighting, well organized, a large dining room table seating 8-10 people, and beautiful wall art hung up in just the right spot.

Well that didn’t happen. I learned quick that life isn’t like tv.

Decorating your home takes time. It usually isn’t done in an instant and sometimes it can take years to complete. The hunt to find the perfect wooden armoire for the bedroom or an antique painting to fill the blank spot on your living room wall can take many trips to auctions, antique shops and garage sales.

And that’s okay. There is beauty in waiting. And fun in searching.

When you finally stumble upon that decorative piece that fits so well in your home, you enjoy it even more than you would have if you had gotten it immediately.

Repurposing an Antique Kitchen Cabinet

I discovered our vintage kitchen cabinet at a local antique mall. It started out in someone’s kitchen painted a pale yellow and cream color (I like to imagine it was full of beautiful floral china). It then became a tv stand holding DVDs and books. Eventually it was painted purple and used as storage rack for blankets and other random supplies. Function over beauty seemed to be the cabinets history.

It was time for a makeover. To bring life, beauty, and purpose back into the cabinet.

As I began pondering how to transform the cabinet, I discovered The Pioneer Woman had just launched the a new line of peel and stick wallpaper. And because I love all things Ree Drummond, I knew this was a great opportunity to purchase from her line (I can never resist).

But there was only one issue. The word wallpaper made me cringe. The thought of purchasing more, made flashbacks of scraping wallpaper off the wall of previous homes, shred by shred by itty bitty, persistent, refuse-to-come-off-the-wall shreds sprang back into my mind. Thankfully, The Pioneer Woman wallpaper was peel and stick. No paste or water required. And it was instantly removable and easy to reposition.

I ordered the Beige and Red Vintage Floral wallpaper design from Walmart. During a trip to Home Depot we color matched the paint color to the beige on the wallpaper.

After we primed the purple cabinet, we added several coats of light beige paint. For the wallpaper to adhere to the cabinet well, we allowed plenty of time for the paint to cure.

Once sufficiently dry, we measured and cut the wallpaper to fit the back wall of the cabinet. To adhere the wallpaper to the cabinet, we started on the left side and slowly unraveled the paper from the roll gently pressing as we went. Using a plastic paint scraper (do not use metal as it will leave scuffs on the wallpaper design) we pressed the paper to the cabinet wall. The process was repeated on the bottom shelf.

The kitchen cabinet makeover turned out even more beautiful than I imagined. The rustic vintage motifs go hand in hand with the age of the vintage shelf. While the colors make a great contrast to the 1930s woodwork in our home.