DIY Caned Cabinet Doors

I am seriously in love with all the caned cabinet doors and other furniture that’s popular these days. This look fits with all of my favorite styles – Chinoiserie, Hollywood Regency, Bohemian, Mid-Century Modern… and I am excited to find a way to bring this into our house!

While we all love seeing the latest trends on Instagram and Pinterest, it’s not practical to constantly change our real-world homes. One of my favorite types of DIY is making over old furniture pieces. This is definitely easier on the wallet and the environment than buying new furniture, and you know I love the process of a DIY as much as the end result! I’ll list more of my past DIY furniture makeovers at the end of this post.

Today’s project was a simple way to add caning to the inside of a cabinet with glass doors. I had four of these in our house and updated all of them! Besides giving a new look, the caning hides any clutter (what clutter?) inside.

What you’ll need:

Caning
White glue
Scissors
Tape measure
Clear push pins

Here’s how to do it:

Unroll your caning to flatten it. Water helps it take on the new shape – you can spray water from a bottle and/or lay a damp towel over the caning

Measure the opening on the inside of your cabinet doors
Put white glue along the edges you will cut, so they don’t unravel when you cut the caning

Cut your sheets of caning
Install behind the glass using clear push pins to hold it in place (I originally tried using these stick-on silicon bumpers, but they fell off. Do as I say and not as I did… use the push pins!)

Here are the pictures of how the cabinets turned out! These are gorgeous Craftsman-style bookcases we’ve had for almost 20 years. I think we’ll keep them for a lot longer, and I am enjoying their updated look!

This white cabinet is about 30 years old – my grandmother bought it from Ikea (!) when she moved to Canada. My mom took it later, and when Steve and I brought it to our house, we painted them white and added these crystal knobs. Glad to see this piece get yet another life in our newly-decorated sunroom! I used leftover caning here, so there is a join in the middle, but I don’t mind in this more casual space.