Old Cabinet Turned New!

This cabinet I refinished for my sister's nursery used to be a busted up, ratty old cabinet that my mom had stored in her garage for about 10 years. It was first purchased at Ikea from the As Is department. It's supposed to be kitchen cabinets. 


My mom bought another set and stacked them on top of each other and used it as a make shift pantry in our small kitchen.

Life: Designed

In the last 10 years, we've moved 5 times and this poor cabinet has been dragged along with us not doing much other than sitting in the garage. 


This summer when I was "shopping" in the garage for furniture for my sister's nursery, I found it all banged up.

Life: Designed

This picture doesn't really do it justice.

It needed some lovin' with paint and wood filler. 

Home Depot

This was the first time working with wood filler and let me tell you... best. thing. ever.

Using the left over paint and primer from this chest makeover, I freshened it up. I was really  not loving the plastic Ikea handles so I replaced them with glass knobs which I got from Home Depot for about $4 each.

Next I was on the hunt for something circular... I was thinking of using these Ikea mats 

Ikea

The colour wasn't quite right but as a last resort, I was going to paint it grey. Or yellow. I kept going back and forth on the colour scheme.

One day I happened upon a new dollar store in my neighbourhood. I love perusing through aisles at dollar stores... 

Then out of the corner of my eye, on the very bottom shelf in the corner, I saw these place mats:

Yes, they are place mats. They came in a set of 4, WITH smaller orange slices to be used as coasters. 

Perfect!

All I had to do was trim the greenery and paint them. 

I decided to go with grey because this cabinet was going to put where the closet used to be. We took off the closet doors to make the room larger. In doing so, we were exposing the existing wallpaper which we didn't deem worth the time, money or effort to get rid of. It was in decent condition and at least it was blue and white...

I love spray paint because it's just so easy. Sometimes though you can get ugly drips and an even spray. This actually happens to be more than I like to admit. Mainly due to the fact that I'm so impatient and I don't give the paint enough time to dry between coats. And ... maybe also because I have a heavy hand when it comes spraying on each coat...

With some spray glue, the circles were in place! 

Next came the letters which I got at the dollar store. I used to buy these at Michael's for about $4 each! I recently was at Michael's and noticed the wooden letters are on sale for $1.49. Not bad.

I wish the spray paint was a brighter yellow but that's the problem with spray paint- you're quite limited with colours. 

The letters are attached with velcro so baby can interchange the letters or we can change them with numbers OR we can put her name on it: Mia. 

Life: Designed

Remember I said the place mats came in a pack of 4? Well I didn't want to throw it away so I used it for this frame:

Life: Designed

I got this frame from a thrift store for a couple bucks. I cut out the mat board and used fabric I had left over from making pillows. The glass that the frame came with was permanently dirty... I tried everything and it was if the dirt or marker or whatever it was had seeped into the glass. It wasn't budging. 

So I got a sheet of mylar from the art store and cut it to size. Good enough. 

Then I added the painted letter on top. Since a name hadn't been decided on, I used their last name initial. Now that she has arrived and we have her name, I'll have to change the C to an M!

Life: Designed

PS. See those drapes? I sewed those! Granted they're nothing fancy but coming from a girl who's sewing projects in 10th grade home economics all fell apart.. this is quite the accomplishment! =)

Thanks for reading! I'm not done on this nursery just yet... some more DIY to come!