Card Catalogue/Apothecary Cabinet, Whichever You Prefer

Today's post is a makeover of a makeover.  Originally this was a television.  In the early 80's my husband decided to make this into a cabinet.  In those days televisions had tubes, we found out the hard way that it was not safe to take the tubes out, it blew up right at him, luckily it didn't blow up into his face and he ended up with only minor cuts.

He put a shelf inside and added doors.  He carefully covered the doors with MacTac, remember that?  It matched the cabinet quite well.  Yeah, I know it was still ugly, but it was the 80's, things have changed a lot since then.

I don't know why I took this picture with it laying on the floor, but I guess you get the idea.

I peeled all the Mactac off the doors which took longer than I expected, and primed the small pieces that I cut out.

 I painted everything with two coats of red, then I sanded it all.

This is a mock up of what it will look like.  I know that this one is laying on the floor so that all the pieces stay on.

You would be surprised how many times I second guess whether or not I should antique the pieces that I work on.  The answer is always YES, you would think I would know that by now.  Below you can see the drawer fronts before and after antiquing.

Okay, so something surprising happened, I antiqued everything, and the next day when I started to varnish the cabinet, the stain started to rub off of the cabinet.  This has never happened to me before, and I'm not sure why it did this time.  So I had to decide whether to start over, or work with it.  Since it is supposed to be rough and old looking I decided to roll with it.

I sanded it between coats of varnish to smooth the finish out a little bit.

Attaching the drawer pulls was a real pain.  I should have had some sort of jig, but couldn't quite wrap my head around how to do it, plus I would have had to make two since I had to different sizes to work with.

As per usual I couldn't wait to share this piece with you, so I am not quite done.  My next post will show what I do with the inside. Until then, enjoy a few more pics.

 I have a few thoughts but haven't quite settled on anything yet.  In the end I absolutely LOVE this piece.  I wonder how many lives this old TV will have, it's on its third right now.

Cedar Chest Makeover; Bringing Back the Beauty!

I was asked to refinish this trunk for a friend.  Since it is fairly flat and I could sand it, I took it on.  I have used furniture stripper on a lot of furniture over the years, but decided long ago that it is something I only do for myself.  It is a nasty job.

This piece is in great condition, it just needs a face lift.

It took quite a bit of sanding, both by machine and by hand.  I stained it with Ebony stain from Minwax.

Then two coats of varnish, satin finish.

These pictures make it look a little washed out, in person it is richer in colour.

When I put the last coat of varathane on this I thought maybe I didn't really improve it that much, then I took a look at the before picture, yeah, I changed my mind!  What do you think?

Vehicle Painted with Camouflage Design, Plus a Camo Dresser, Can You Find Them?

I'm very excited about this post.   Last year my youngest son Sterling painted his Tracker in camo, he absolutely blew me away, he did such an awesome job!  I couldn't believe it, all of my kids are creative in their own way but he had not shown any sign of being an artist.  This was fabulously done!  I have been wanting him to paint some furniture for me ever since.

I bought a dresser at a yard sale and it is good and solid, I decided it was a good candidate for this paint technique.

I sanded the dresser and then stained the parts that I didn't want painted.  I then taped over the stained areas.  I did a little something different this time, I varnished around the taped areas lightly hoping that the varathane will seal the edge of the tape.  It does have a nice crisp edge so I guess it worked.

When the varathane was dry I painted it with Zinser 123 primer.

Here is a picture of the dresser waiting for Sterling's touch.

These are the paints, plus black of the same series.

The day has finally arrived. After this picture I did go over the stained areas and stained them darker.  I also varathaned the stained area.  

I wasn't sure what I was going to do about hardware, until I saw the dresser painted and then I knew...

hunter orange!

I love the way it turned out!

He did an awesome job, I think we make a great team!

The hardware turned out great!  It looks pretty light in this picture, I think the other pictures show the colour better, but look at the detail in the painting, awesome!

I hope it sells because I want to do another one, or 10, you know, why not carry on a good thing?

An Old Worn Out Trunk Finds It's Feminine Side; Trunk Makeover

I love trunks, don't you?  Trunks and dressers seem to find their way to me, and I guess chairs too.  Well maybe tables, and bed frames too, OK, OK, a lot of old furniture finds it's way to me.  Wow, I need to find a way to attract buffets/sideboards, because those are my favourite.  Notice I clarified that by adding sideboards?  Food buffets don't find their way to me, but I possibly may find my way to them a little too often, you know what I mean?

I digress, back on topic, I do love trunks, this one was given to me by a friend, it came out of an old cabin that he was renovating.  You just never know if someone is going to throw everything to the dump, so just in case, I told him if any of the furniture was going to the dump, please give me first crack at it.  I hate it when furniture goes to the dump.  He gave me two end tables, a dresser and this trunk, wow, great haul.

Speaking of haul, here is my husband hauling it all home for me, even though he threatens to burn all my "junk" on a daily basis.  Did I mention the cabin was on an island, ha ha, we had to get it before the ice broke up, yes that is ice, not a farmer's field.

I'm not sure why pictures never show how bad something really looks, and then later pictures never seem to do a piece justice, how can that be?  Maybe I'll ask Siri, she always bugging me for questions ;)

Anyway, some of the fabric had been torn off this trunk, which saved me from having to do it, because it had to go!

The inside didn't look any better.

I gave the whole thing a good sanding, inside and out.

It looked pretty good, those brown spots are just where snow was melting off the roof.

I had some gel stain handy, so I put that on it.  It looked great, but didn't have any pizzaz.

I added turqoise and thought I ruined the whole thing!  It doesn't look so bad in the picture, but in person it looked gaudy.

I sanded most of it away, and suddenly I loved it.  I varnished the whole thing, metal and all and it really added life to it, especially the hardware.

I still needed something to put it over the top.  I painted a flourish on the front to add just that little bit extra. 

and another on the top, ahhh, perfection. I added just a little stain on the flourishes just to tone them down a bit.

Ok, I will confess, this is not quite finished, I need to replace the handles on the sides which I will do with pieces of an old belt.  Ha, you didn't even notice did you?

Army Trunk Makeover; Camo!

This summer I went to look at a coffee table that someone was selling and a friend thought I would want.  That table was not something that appealed to me, but while there I saw this army trunk, and thought I could do something with it.  As you can see somebody had previously made it over :)

As lovely as their artwork was, I removed it.

This did require quite a bit of sanding.

I taped off the hardware because I liked the patina on them.  I thought about painting them black but decided to keep the original.

My son came up with a technique to do camouflage that I absolutely love.  Soon I will show you pictures of a vehicle that he painted, amazing!  I have prepared a dresser that I want him to paint and once that's done I will blog about both.  In the meantime I tried to figure out his process and this is how my first attempt came out.  I'm showing you mine first so you can't compare it to his and find mine lacking :)

Front

Back

I left the inside as it was because I thought it looked great.

It looks like it was manufactured in 1963, a good year, one of my beautiful sisters, Lesley, was born that year, she made me a big sister, until that time I was only a little sister.  I remember the day she came home, I was only 3 so you know that was a big deal if I still remember it.

I'm probably not finished with this as I'm thinking about building a stand for it.  Perfect for a toy box, or a coffee table in a man cave.