Recently, several pins for painted metal file cabinets caught my eye. That seemed like a fairly simple project to tackle. I remembered that I had an old metal file cabinet just sitting in the deep, dark corner of my basement, so I had my son haul it upstairs for me. Then, it just so happened that my husband brought home a freebie metal file cabinet from one of his contract remodeling jobs (they were going to throw it away and it is in perfect shape. Gotta love those kind of freebies!) Now, I had two metal file cabinets that I could paint.
They're not exactly alike or the same size, but that's okay. My husband and I headed to Lowe's to pick up some sandpaper and spray paint. You don't even want to know how long I stood in the paint aisle trying to choose colors - I'm really indecisive when it comes to stuff like that, drives my husband crazy.
In the end I chose Rust-Oleum Gloss Fern and Valspar Gloss Lovely Bluff. I chose strictly based on color; I didn't know if one brand would be better than the other - more on that later.
Once we got started on the project (and I use the term "we" very lightly because my husband did most of the work - he is nice like that), the first thing we did was to remove and/or tape off the hardware. Then, we had to sand the cabinets with sandpaper.
Next, we wiped all the dust off with a clean, dry cloth and got ready to paint. Hubs followed the directions on the spray paint can and applied two coats of color.
The Rust-Oleum green paint went on smoothly, provided great coverage, and gave a super slick, glossy finish - just what we were wanting. The Valspar cream paint didn't cover as well and took a lot longer to dry. It turned out fine in the end, but we were just more impressed with the Rust-Oleum product.
So shiny!
As I said, I really can't take all the credit for this project. I did some sanding and wiping, but my husband did all of the painting. Thank you, honey!
Now, I can do what I consider the fun part...organizing and filling up the cabinet! Not only will these be useful for filing but I also think they will work nicely as an accent table. I can put a small lamp and some other little decorative accessories on top. I'm planning on using them in our basement office (which is not even finished yet but hopefully will be soon).
How about you? Have you done any quick and easy DIY projects lately?
6 comments:
Very nice job! Hey, you sanded, that totally counts as having a major part. I'm not crafty either! I would not have thought to sand the metal cabinet at all.
That looks really nice. You't can't tell that the filing cabinet was ever any other color but green!
I love DIY projects. These look great
Okay this is weird... we totally are planning on painting our filing cabinets and the color we picked is just a shade darker than the green you chose! Glad to see it turned out awesome!
I have always wanted to get these paints to try. I'd love to do some DYI's. great post!
I like the color you chose. It has a cheery, retro feel to it. :)
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