modern industrial file cabinet makeover, part two

Whee! I'm back with the follow up to my recent entry about the modern industrial makeover I gave this 1980s black + fake wood steel filing cabinet.

As you might recall, a few weeks ago I started cleaning my room, realized we needed a full-sized file cabinet instead of a bunch of file boxes, and got sidetracked from the room cleaning project while I finished making it over . . .

. . . into this bare steel industrial-style cabinet.  I don't mind having it in my house, even though it's full of boring papers and responsibility.

It's not just me, right? This is a little like when Eliza Dolittle turns out to be a stunner. (The rain in Spain is falling mainly on the plain, am I right?) Or like when Rachael Leigh Cook takes off the glasses and Freddie Prinze Jr. realizes she's Superman?

I really like the way this turned out.

When I last wrote about this cabinet, I'd stripped and sanded the main body and managed to get most of the paint off. I decided to keep the paint that remained after hours of palm sanding (aka: clanging and waking the neighbors) and I'm pretty happy about it. The black paint in the rivets, dents, and folds makes me happy.

Then I attached the casters, bought new from Harbor Freight on super sale. I had first searched the big bin o' casters at Bring and came up a couple short of a matching set, sadly. I like to check there first then follow up elsewhere. I don't always find what I need on the first try, but when I do, it's always worth the search.

I flipped the cabinet, exposing its rusty underside . . .

. . . and used the casters to mark where to drill the holes.

Once the holes were drilled and the filings swept away, I used three little bolts and three little nuts to attach each caster to the cabinet (the fourth hole won't fit on the frame).

And then, with all of the wheels attached, I flipped it upright and the easy part was done.

I say that because this next bit was kind of a trial.

I really wanted bare steel fronts until I started sanding the first drawer with the palm sander. It was slow, noisy work that reminded me (negatively) of sanding the cabinet (clangity clang clang!). I thought I might prime + chalkboard the drawer faces instead. And it was a bad idea.

I'd just finished removing all of that black paint from the rest of the cabinet and I didn't at all like it on the drawer fronts. The paintbrush marks didn't appeal to me, either, so I switched courses (after everything was painted, unfortunately) and decided to try sandblasting.

After a few days of waiting and gathering supplies, here's one attempt with the sandblaster + walnut shell media + 30 minutes. Look at how it's not even breaking through the original wood patterned paint. Awesome.

I switched to using sand as media and had an easier time of it, but really, our air compressor is just too wimpy for sandblasting.

I decided to try the orange paint stripper again and actually had pretty awesome luck with it. You can see here the less reflective (darker) areas where, after an hour or so of sandblasting, some of the paint came off. The lighter areas are where the paint stripper did it's thing, and then I did mine with a Scotch Brite pad, a sanding block, and some steel wool.

It took a bit of work to get the finish even, but only on this one drawer. The others hadn't been sandblasted yet when I moved on to paint stripper.

Handles were next! I shared a photo of seemingly random bits of metal hardware in the previous post; they weren't random after all, at it turns out. I used some of those pieces to make four new handles with the character I wanted.

I made the handles from some blank metal outlet plates and what I think were probably sliding screen door handles in a former life. This was my favorite part of this makeover, and the thing I think added the most to the piece. (I bought the light switch plates, too, unsure of which combination would work out. These cost between twenty-five and fifty cents at Bring, and I'll be able to find another use for them so I wasn't concerned about over-purchasing.)

I drilled holes through the old handles, using the blank outlet plates as templates. Little bolts and nuts joined them together to make a nice flat surface for the final piece.

After drilling one more hole and applying one more bolt per drawer, the handles are complete. When well-tightened, these don't shift or wiggle (possibly because the bolts underneath encourage them to stay in place).

Here it is, back in one piece, exuding awesomeness and making paperwork look a whole lot less 1980s-style boring.

This was a time-consuming project, but not outrageously expensive:

• filing cabinet: $11.25 on sale at St. Vincent dePaul
• handle parts: $5 or so, total, used from Bring
• casters: $4 total, on super sale at Harbor Freight for $1 each
• bolts + nuts: $5 or so, including bolts from Bring, nuts from the hardware store
• coarse sandpapers and sanding block: $6
• orange stripping gel spray: $9
• Scotch Brite pads: had on hand

Ultimately the sandblasting kit and media weren't necessary or useful for this project, so I'm leaving them off the materials list. In lieu of a powerful air compressor/sandblaster combination, what you really need to finish something like this is a whole mess of elbow grease.

Thanks for sticking with me through the many, many words and pictures! I'm really pleased with how it came out, in case you couldn't tell. Now I can start obsessing over something else on Pinterest.

Linking up to:
My Repurposed Life
The Cottage Market

industrial file cabinet makeover (part one)

Don't avert your eyes; you'll hurt its feelings.

We were in pretty urgent need of a four-drawer filing cabinet for organizing papers and craft supplies, but I had some standards that needed to be met:

1) Must be under 18 inches deep. This was a hard one, as many of the filing cabinets I was scouting out were quite a bit deeper, and I just don't have that kind of space right now.

2) Must be steel. (That wood pattern you see there isn't wood; it's a wood patterned paint on metal drawers. In person, it's really easy to tell the difference.) Steel has the advantage of being lighter than wood (at least, with modern steel construction) and won't let me down by turning out to be made of veneered particle board. Also, modern steel filing cabinets are pretty easy to find at thrift stores; the more modern, the less likely to have lead paint.

3) Must either have a key or have an unlocked top drawer. I passed on a giant antique three-door filing cabinet because the top drawer was locked and I knew it would be a large additional cost to get the lock drilled out. And who knows what was in the top! Could be old papers, could be dead raccoon. Never mind that the cabinet in question met neither of the previous specifications. It was gorgeous blue and had really lovely handles. But the locked cabinet drawer was a deal-breaker for $150.

I spotted this cabinet at St. Vincent de Paul on a day when yellow price tags were 25% off. After discount, I paid $11.24 for it. It met all of the above specifications, with the downside being that it's not a showpiece. I absolutely can't stand the handles.

So, I never intended to leave it as-is. I wanted something more like one of the cabinets I've pinned to my File Cabinets Pinterest board: protected bare metal, nicer hardware, with a style more vintage-industrial than 1980s-office. Sadly, I'm completely priced out of that market. Completely. I'm in more of a $50-filing-cabinet tax bracket.

Okay: so, for the first step, I brought the thing home, removed the drawers, and dug some green paint stripper out of the shed.

I was pretty optimistic after an hour, as the paint on the back was very bubbly and then scraped right off without a tantrum. I'd only used the green paint stripper on wood before (and been frustrated by the lack of results), so I was all excited about how well the rest of the cabinet would go.

You can see the back here, mostly paint-less, and the top, still painty and scabby even after giving the paint stripper another few hours to sit. (I would have let it sit overnight, but for the rain.)

The front and sides fared about the same.

This was a pretty big letdown after how easy the back was. A second run with a different brand of stripper didn't do much but make a mess and waste money.

The palm sander started out not making very good progress, but did better once I'd attached a 35-grit paper and really went at it. It was a lengthy, messy, NOISY undertaking. Sometimes you know a project is done because it's better than you could have imagined. Sometimes you know it's done because no one can listen to even one more minute of the sander vibrating a piece of sheet metal.

After sanding, I buffed it with a coat of automotive wax to protect the finish.

Here is the cabinet as it will stay, with a bit of black left, emphasizing the vintage look (I think it will do nicely).

 
And here is a sneak peek of what's yet to come:

If getting paint off of these cabinets wasn't such a major pita, I'd have a couple of sets of lockers in my carport stripped already. Wanna know something exciting? We've bought a sandblasting kit! I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm really looking forward to seeing how much faster and easier this project is with that tool in hand.

I'll be back soon with part two of this vintage industrial file cabinet makeover, when things really start coming together. Thanks for reading! 

kitchen, bit-by-bit

Our kitchen project pre-dates this blog. Somewhere around here, I have photos of the "Before" kitchen, with dark wood cabinets, orange laminate countertops, copper hardware, and OMG, the most amazing silver foil wallpaper, with mustard yellow and orange daisies printed on it in stripes. It was really something. Where the sun had hit some portions of it through the window for decades, the flowers were faded. Where it hadn't, they were hurt-your-eyes vibrant. 

Anyway, photos somewhere, not here, not now, except that this old photo (from 2008, when we started re-doing the countertops at the same time I was closing down the bookstore) shows a snippet of the old burnt orange countertop.

We took out the orange laminate backsplash, covered everything with 1/4-inch cement backer board, and started laying down slate tiles. We also took out the beaten and chipped up 1960s sink. 

The tile looks better cleaned and polished. This photo is more recent, from a month or so ago when I was trying to finish up the slate backsplash installation (five years after starting the project). I had cleaned everything off the counters and decided it was a good time for resealing the stone.

The mister took the opportunity to install these little undercabinet lights from Ikea.

The kitchen is small, so the three pack was enough to light up the area. A really nice touch. It makes the whole place look brighter and more modern.

We don't renovate our kitchen; we evolve it. And I guess that all evolution takes time. But making progress feels good. I'm really looking forward to getting a little further along soon. 

Anyhow, take heart, you fellow slow renovators! I sometimes get this feeling like every other blogger in the universe is able to diy amazing renovations in a relatively short time. When I was a kid, though, this was more how things got done: a little change here, a little change there, a new walkway and paint.  We were in it for the long haul. Money and time constraints, other projects to pursue, weekend bike rides, and a passel of little kids running around; our house was in a seemingly constant state of flux. As is my current home. And while somedays it would be kinda awesome to just have something finished already, I kinda like our weekend adventures, and playing in the backyard, and working on side projects. So the backsplash will get finished eventually. And so will the plaster and paint in the bedroom. And the siding on the studio. You know. Someday. 

Thanks for reading. 

thrift store finds: steel storage box

Update: voting for "So You Think You're Crafty" is completed for the week (as of today, January 11th) and I've made it through to the next round!

Thank you all for your votes, and please check back; I'll have a full tutorial for my project up within the next few days. Woohoo!


I found this great steel box with a sliding lid out at Bring awhile back ($4) and have had it sitting in my carport on top of a set of lockers for a couple of months now.

Finally, right before Christmas, when we were expecting house guests and I was trying to get things just a smidgeon organized, I went out and cleaned it up and decided to finally hang it on the wall like I'd intended to do since finding it. Its purpose: to hold cleaning supplies and the kitchen fire extinguisher.

I don't know what purpose it served in its previous life, though it looks to be from the first half of the 20th century. I thought at first it might be a flammable liquids storage box, except the vent on the front (or top, depending on how it originally sat) wouldn't make much sense.

My sister-in-law suggested that it might have been a bread box, which would make sense. Maybe one that stored inside a drawer or something? The sliding lid could still have functioned that way.

At any rate, there were no holes or hangers on the back, and a note (written in marker on bright pink paper) attached to the side (with masking tape) read, "curtains to mend". Not that those two clues narrow it down much.

I admit it: I drilled holes in the back and tried hanging it with picture hangers, but that was just a temporary fix and was really unstable; it needed to be hung with drywall anchors, screws, and washers. I'd normally woman-up and do it myself, but I didn't want to brave the shed right now to find the drill. When the mister offered to take care of it for me, I let him.

I always like the character that beat-up old things add to the house. And it inspired me to put in a little more time priming the kitchen walls, so hey, double points for me!

So: what fun old stuff are you bringing into the house these days? Anyone getting any eye rolls? The mister is a master of hiding his, if he's rolling them at all. He's a good guy.

Thanks for reading!