DIY Cabinet Redo

I have been hinting around about the "big project" I've been working on.  I finally finished it tonight!  I honestly thought I was never going to get it done.  I started on it about two months ago and the weather and real life prevented me from working on it.

This is my Grandma's china cabinet.  It is at least 46 years old and was given to me about 10 or 15 years ago.  It was on loan to my former church's parsonage until this past spring.  We put it in our garage until I figured out what I wanted to do with it.  I decided to totally redo the look.  I couldn't decide on what color to paint it.  I knew I wanted it to be contrasty, but not so trendy that the colors would be "out" in a few years.  I debated on whether or not to use earth tone colors like my Grandma liked, but finally decided to use traditional eye-popping colors that *I* like.  My husband and I went to Home Depot and he decided for us to use spray paint.  [Note: never again!]  I looked at all the colors and decided on Colonial Red for the outside, Heirloom White for the inside, and Brushed Nickel for the hardware, all in satin finish.  I used a kind of a brownish-red primer for the red and a white primer for the off-white.

My husband did the sandpapering prep work.  He also replaced the left side of the base cabinet because it had been damaged in the process of being moved (I was not happy!).  He also moved the cabinet in and out of the garage and onto the platform in the backyard.  The platform is actually the floor of the old shed that my husband took down this summer.  He decided to leave it there until we finish all of our painting projects.  (I have just one more project in mind.)

It took several weekends to get it all done.  I really wanted to have it done within two weeks of starting; instead, it took two months to finish it!  I kept telling Robert, "I'm never going to get my cabinet done!"  Little bit of drama there.

If I had to do it all over again, I would absolutely not use spray paint, at least not for both colors.  Even with using painter's tape and masking paper, I had spray from color onto another color.  I went to Home Depot and got sample containers of paint to match the spray paint (I spray painted a couple of popsicle sticks), but the red turned out to be totally off.  The off-white was close enough that I could use it.  I resorted to using a red sharpie marker to touch up the red which is not the best but will work for now.  I think I'm going to find some acrylic paint that matches and use that to touch up instead.

With the hardware, I used the primer paint and the brushed nickel.  What's funny is that if it could be painted on the wrong side, I did that!  I had to go back and paint the correct sides of the hinges and the magnet plates.  I suppose I was in a hurry and guessed rather than tried to figure out the correct sides when I was doing it.

There are still some brown glass etching on the doors that I don't know how to get rid of.  I'll just leave it until I find out what to do.

I finished up the main painting on Saturday and Robert brought it into the house that evening. I finished up the painting this afternoon and put everything together.  Robert helped me put the glass doors on.  I'm so happy that it's done, and I really like the results!

I will be using this cabinet as a combo office supply cabinet (for the drawers) and photo album cabinet (for the shelves).  This means that I can work on organizing my photos and putting them in albums.  I also want to do photo books for our family.