Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Tale of a Hexagon Cabinet

Have you met my friend Murphy yet?  And I use the word friend lightly.  Maybe you've been introduced to his frustrating law!  Allow me to explain.

I picked up this fun little table from my brother-in-law about a month ago before he added it to his garage sale pile.

 It was a bit dusty and definitely dated, but I knew it could be freshened up!  I added a coat of primer and then sat back and thought "now what?".  I decided to go online and see if I could find any pictures for inspiration.  Here are a couple similar tables I came across:




Aren't they pretty?  I decided to paint the outside of mine a clean crisp white.  White paint pretty much makes anything look better!!!!

Curious to see my finished cabinet?  Here it is!  I LOVE IT!



I added a poly acrylic clear coat to protect it and some new hardware to update it. Simple, right? Well, sounds simple enough except I didn't mention the issues I had with the clear coat or the hardware!

The clear coat I like to use is Minwax Polyacrylic.  It's a waterbased sealer that won't yellow over time, so it's safe to put over white & light colored paints.  The application suggestions are to use either a synthetic brush or foam brush.  I thought a foam brush would be a great idea so I wouldn't have any brush strokes.  Um...ya...unfortunately the foam brush was producing a foam with the sealer and causing tiny bubbles!  Great.  It didn't smooth out properly on one side and I had to resand it and start over (using a bristle brush instead).

And then, there was the hardware.  I had planned to use the original hinges - nothing some white spraypaint couldn't make new again, right?  Um, wrong.  These particular hinges are self-closing and so as soon as I opened the hinge, the spring mechanism inside scraped all my spraypaint off the center!  Frustrating.  Not a big deal, Home Depot still makes these, so I just picked up some new ones.  Ya...

What I picked up was these:

See the wonderful little step down on the right?  Not what I needed!  What I REALLY needed was these:


NO STEP!  Never fails.  Oh well, it was worth the numerous trips into town because they DO look nice, don't they? :)


Oh, and the new cabinet pulls I chose - of course they required two holes, so I had to fill the original single hole and drill two new ones.


So, there you have it - my friend Murphy's Law. ;)


ANYWAY, now that the outside is finally finished, are you ready to see the inside?  I decided to have a little fun.  I painted the inside...TURQUOISE!  How fun is that!  No more scary dark corners in this cabinet!


I LOVE how it just adds that bit of unexpected pop of color to the piece! And, check out the storage space this baby has!  It's perfect to tuck away extra blankets, books, magazines or even kids toys!


What do you think?  Isn't it a great change from the old dated look before.

I am SO happy this cabinet is finally finished - it was certainly one that tested my patience!!!

This is a piece I painted to sell, so take a peek in my Shop if you're interested!

Thanks for visiting!

Cristina



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7 comments:

  1. Turned out great! Love the fun pop of color on the inside. I have one of these sitting in my garage waiting to be refinished. Thanks for the inspiration!

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  2. White...WHITE...always RIGHT!! Gorgeous re-do!!

    Deborah (happily visiting from
    http://upcyclingmylife.blogspot.com/)

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  3. I Love these little cabinets...They really make so much sense, with storage hidden inside!! I took the doors off mine and turned it into a cat bed-night stand for my daughter and her cat Calico...They both seem to love it!! The next one I do will be black...with a pop of color (thanks to you) inside!!!
    Denise

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  4. Thanks Denise! I agree - the amount of storage in these cabinets is amazing!

    Thanks for visiting! :)

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  5. Oh*my*gosh... we have twin tables!! I redid a table just like this. Before I did mine I looked everywhere for this shape and really couldn't find anything. Here's a link to mine. I laughed out loud when I saw the inside of your table.... you'll see why :O)

    http://charmednblum.blogspot.com/2011/07/finally-post-and-some-furniture-re-dos.html

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  6. Thanks Lora! Just popped over to your blog - too funny we went with the same color combo!!! :)

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Thoughts or comments? I'd love to hear them!