Restoring An Heirloom Cabinet
So last year I inherited a fifty-year-old cabinet. It had previously belonged to a doctor, who had swapped it with my artist Grandpa for one of his paintings:
It was in pretty poor condition - and smelled fragrantly of iodine:
Check out the ring marks. I do like the beaten-up tin boxes, however:
Decades of paint layers were crumbling off:
So the first step, natch, was to sand that sucker down. Very carefully, by hand, of course.
Yeah, who am I kidding, I totally broke out the power sander:
Many hours later (sanding is a lot harder than you think it's going to be), every nerve in my body was jangling, and I was coated in a delightful layer of fifty-year-old white dust to boot. Lovely.
Next steps - paint the base coat, paint the top coat, distress the top coat slightly to reveal the base coat at strategic points (yeah, the irony of taking a distressed cabinet and spending hours of work to distress it some more), and accessorise.
Watch this space...
Have you ever tried your hand at furniture restoration?
Weekend DIY Projects | tagged Furniture
Reader Comments (5)
I cannot wait to see the finished product! :) It's such a beautiful piece!
What a cool project - I love that cabinet and agree those tin drawers add so much character. Can't wait to see how it turns out!
Just love the cabinet! It's going to be gorgeous... but what color? How to decide... yes, I've been doing a lot of this lately. Great blog for recycling: finedivingchicago She tackles all sorts of projects!
Can't wait to see it finished. I'm most distressed that I let my Grandmother's duck egg blue fifties kitchen cabinets slip through my fingers. :/
Thanks, guys! I did dither over the colour slightly, because I really fancy pulling off a Design*Sponge style turquoise or mustard cabinet with scarlet handles or something, but then I remembered that a cabinet like this would not match anything in our casa at all, so it's going to be a nice tasteful ivory :-)