This week I'm going to take a small detour from my usual topics of fabric and yarn. I've been spending lots of time on Pintrest and have been trying out some of the projects I've found. When possible I'll give you links to tutorials. Most of the time I look at dozens of similar projects for what I want to do and then figure out a way to make the project my own.
I've needed a filing cabinet for a long time, but have been struggling to figure out where to put it. Recently I decided to replace my side table with a filing cabinet. My sister works at the local college which had a garage sale last week. She was so sweet to run across campus in the freezing cold to buy me a filing cabinet for two dollars! My dear husband then ran into town and brought it home for me.
Aside from being rather drab it's in great shape. My original plan had been to spray paint it a nice aqua color and use contact paper to give the drawers an extra pop. However the day I was planning to paint we got a blizzard and I don't see our temperatures getting back into the 50s (which the can says I need for the paint to work) until spring. I really didn't want to have a big green filing cabinet in my living room for six months so I went with Plan B.
Contact paper! Amazon has hundreds of choices of contact paper. I found this great walnut contact paper for $6.02 a roll. After following my husband's advice I measured the cabinet and figured out that I needed 2 rolls for my filing cabinet. (Thanks husby for averting crafting disaster.) I also found this cute polka dot for $5.98 for the fronts.
Two hours later and my filing cabinet looks like a piece of furniture worthy of being in our living room. I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of applying the contact paper. I made sure to clean the cabinet before hand, took my time and peeled the paper off slowly as I applied it. I saw recommendations to use a squeegee, but since I didn't have one I used a fake credit card I'd received in the mail. I also used a pin to pop any air bubbles that I wasn't able to smoosh out with my "squeegee".
My husband and I are talking about making a real wood top for it with some scrap lumber. I'm also thinking about painting the drawers and reapplying the contact paper this spring with some nicer drawer pulls. The green and tan paint from before show through, but for now I'm really happy with how it turned out.
In summary:
Filing cabinet: $2.00
Walnut Wood Grain Contact Paper $12.04
Polka Dot Contact Paper $5.98
Total Cost: $20.02
Come back Wednesday to see how Pintrest inspired my Thanksgiving table!
Neat way to make over the filing cabinet. I just threw a tablecloth over mine and stuck cute magnets on the front of mine, lol.
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