Mikki Brisk

 

 

When my friend Gwendolyn called and asked if I wanted a cabinet she was getting rid of, I asked for the measurements. After a few minutes, I considered my options and told her that yes, we would indeed take that cabinet.

 

 

It had seen better days. When Gwendolyn acquired it, it was already old and put to use in a lake house. Some years later, another friend took it and used it in her boys’ room as a dresser. (That’s where I’d first seen the piece.) After that friend revamped her kids’ room, it went back to Gwendolyn. Having no space or use for it, she offered it to me.

 

When I first started studying the cabinet, all I could see were flaws. The finish was mucked up pretty bad. There were stickers on the wood. Nicks, mars and splinters were plentiful. The insides of the drawers were a nightmare and my germaphobia was screaming at me to never put a single thing in any of those filthy drawers.

 

 

Our first test was the top. We decided to simply clean the piece and use a dark-tinted wax. Could we have sanded the entire thing and refinished it? Sure. But there was something about its age that we wanted to keep. So clean and wax it was. Once the top had a nice sheen to it, we decided to move forward and tackle the whole she-bang.

 

 

The insides of the drawers were painted. And the insides of my germaphobia calmed the hell down.

 

 

The drawer pulls were painted. Mister chose a sassy red, as the piece is to be used in our rumpus room and nothing says rumpus like sassy red, y’all.

 

And that was that! It turned out beautifully and is incredibly functional for us. We’ve already stored our dinner napkins and DVDs in the old cabinet. There’s space for commonly used tools and other miscellany, too. We’re figuring out labels for the drawer pulls, since their original design included label space. That will surely polish the old gal to the nines.

 

 

While I did indeed feel like “The Karate Kid” with all the wax-on, wax-off that took place, I’m quite pleased with the results. Mister’s happy, too. Not too shabby for a free piece of furniture.