I made progress on several items on my studio to-do list yesterday, but the only one I finished was repainting the paint swatch cabinet. Originally, I painted the cabinet black. In my mind, the black acted as a frame for the “artwork” of the paint swatch doors.

I do think that the black did exactly what I expected it to do. It framed the doors very nicely, and there was nothing I disliked about the cabinet itself.

What I didn’t love was the overall look of the black cabinet in the room, and especially with it sitting that close to the back entry. I didn’t like the black cabinet in the same view with the dark purple doors of the back entry.

And since I plan on painting the bases of the work tables that same eggplant color, I just didn’t think the black would work in the end. Plus, it drew a little too much attention to the cabinet (i.e., the “frame) and drew attention away from the doors, which should be the focus of the cabinet.

So I decided to paint the cabinet white. I used the same Behr Polar Bear that I used on the background of the doors. It’s also the same white that I use on all of the trim in our house. It has been my go-to white paint for over a decade now.

I didn’t prime the cabinet first. Since it was painted with Behr latex paint and no clear coat, I just gave all of the black parts a quick sanding by hand, and then painted right over the black.

I really like how the white makes the cabinet not so prominent so that the doors can be the focus.

I didn’t push the cabinet back into place yet because I would just have to move it out again in order to install the baseboards on the wall to the left of the cabinet. In fact, I’ll have to pull it out even further to reach that corner to install trim. So for now, we’ll just have to imagine what the white cabinet will look like sitting against the light gray wall.

Once the cabinet is back in its place, I’ll need to do one more coat of white on the trim right along the floor.

I didn’t want to do that with the cabinet pulled out because, as you can see, even though I taped around the trim last time, I still managed to get black paint on the floor and wall.

I’m hoping I can get that up with a Magic Eraser before pushing the cabinet back into place and putting a second coat of white paint on that bottom trim. If it won’t come up with a Magic Eraser, I’ll need to do some touchups on the floor paint before moving the cabinet back into place.