When we visited the in-laws a few weeks ago, we grabbed an old cabinet that was sitting out on the street. It didn’t look too hot, but we figured we could make it better and we wanted to have a new stand for our cell phones to charge on (and some better storage under them wouldn’t hurt either).
This past weekend, Barbara and I spent several hours refinishing and making modifications to the cabinet. We replaced all the hardware, stripped the paint, repainted, and even faux finished it. We also added legs to make it taller and a couple tiles on top for a classier look. Overall, we spent about $45 on the thing, and I’d say it was worth it.
Adding the legs was probably the easiest part of the whole job. The tile was pretty easy too, I just measured the top and bought two 13" tiles at Lowe’s and had them cut at the store to be just the right size. Then we glued them in place, and used some leftover caulk from replacing our countertops to ‘grout’ with. The fun part was stripping off all the old paint.
There were at least five layers of old paint on the cabinet, and sanding wasn’t the way to go. So, we used a chemical stripper to remove most of the paint, sanded that down and repainted from there. Barbara then applied a faux finish using the new wall color in our ‘office’ area to give the cabinet an aged look. Once all the paint was dry, we put on the new hardware, stuck the tiles on top, and put it in the office in place of the basket rack that we were using to keep all our phone charger cords in place. I think it turned out pretty nicely!
The only downside is that I got a nice sunburn across my shoulders and most of my back. That’s what I get for not wearing my sunscreen.