I love quirky old furniture. We found this cool cabinet about an hour before an Estate sale was scheduled to close. They were giving a 50% discount on all of the marked prices. They wanted to clean out that house and have the rest of the stuff go! We got a few small items from inside the house and then saw this cabinet in the garage for $30! We paid and went home to get the van. I love a good deal and was so excited. I knew it could be so much more!
When we got it home, I cleaned it up and placed it on the side of the house. We had some other projects we were working on, so while it waited for its turn it sat here. I styled the shelves with other estate and thrift store treasures. It’s tall and quirky and a bit wonky. Oh, so many characteristics that I love in an old piece of furniture. But it was missing its bottom, and part of the back panel.
I knew we were going to have to build a base and add a back panel piece. But still, here it sat, while we worked on other projects and the weather got colder. It was November before it was time to get working on the cabinet. November in Michigan can be cold, and wet. Not the best time to work on furniture. But…
Then I talked the Man into bringing the cabinet inside the house to work on. I made a simple plan to get the cabinet up and ready. We would build the base out of 2 x4’s and get a 1/4″ piece of plywood to fix the back panel. I would paint then paint the cabinet. Easy peasy, we could finish it in a weekend. Well, we all know how the best-laid plans can go.
Once I got it in the house and started working on it, I noticed that the corner of the cabinet needed to be fixed. And about two hours later I was here. I had used a scrap piece of pallet wood to cover the broken corner and just kept going. This changed our whole plan. I kept covering the whole exterior of the cabinet with the pallet wood. Then the fun part came to take this back outside to be sanded. Oh, that Man loves me. My simple one-weekend plan turned into a three-week project. But he was on board and we got it done.
I missed taking some of the in-progress photos but here we are. All of the facing done, the base built, and the back panel in place. We then changed our minds on painting the cabinet. The Man’s favorite color is purple and mine is blue. We decided to try some of those color stains. I chose a royal blue, you can see how bright it was on the new 2×4’s and 1/4″ plywood. But covering the old red color and all of the pallet wood it came out more purple.
To get the new wood to match a little better, I added a redwood stain over the blue. Red + Blue = Purple. And it worked and came out so pretty! Yes, it is darker than I wanted but we both love it!
Here it is in the kitchen. All stocked with our open pantry. We have been living with it for a couple of months now, and I still love it! It was an old quirky piece of furniture that we took and gave some love to and now it is useful again. After all, was said and done, we spent another $45 on wood and stain and screws. So we got a new cabinet for $75, I’ll take it!
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