A Tale of One Filing Cabinet

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...Grab some popcorn people, this could be epic. Or probably just long... The saga begins in February, 2010...

Behold, the before of the office:





When Mr. Wonderful and I married, I inherited this filing cabinet. It's not a bad filing cabinet, but it didn't really go with the antique table we're using as a desk. It's more contemporary, shall we say. But it's made of wood, so of course I wanted to paint it. Mr. Wonderful gave me permission to do whatever I wanted with it. Yay! But, needing to make things complicated, and having seen this post on Centsational Girl, I decided to experiment with paintable wallpaper. You know, I had a 9 month old child, what else did I have to do? I found it on sale at Menards for about $10. We don't have a bathtub, so I used storage tubs to soak the wallpaper.
Fold it, glue-y sides together.

Originally I had planned to wrap the paper around to the back, but it failed epically, as the drawers are too close together to allow for the raised surface of the wallpaper. So I decided to just leave it on the fronts.

After painting the whole cabinet Cottage White by Behr, this is what I had. (These pictures are from back in March)

Looks pretty good. I knew I was going to add hardware eventually. I ordered some label holders for my birthday (some women want clothes, some women want hardware!), and thought I could use some of my "found" hardware to go with them.

But the reality was that it wasn't working. I ignored it for many months, but the wallpaper wasn't totally adhered to the filing cabinet, I had a curious toddler on my hands and I knew it was just a matter of time until things got ugly, but I felt stuck with it.

Enter screen molding. I think that's what it's called. I looked for the cheapest molding I could find at Menards, basically.

I used a miter box (yes, it was even me! It wasn't even Mr. Wonderful!) to make some 45 degree cuts using the measurements of the drawer fronts.

They looked kind of rough

So I found something that looked like an emory board and filed away.

Looking better!

Using tiny headless brad nails I hammered the moulding to the fronts, used a tiny nail punch to get them all the way in the grooves, painted them with some off white freebie paint I had (antique white from Glidden), and used caulking to fill in the corners as well as the sides where the edges of the wallpaper showed through. Then I added hardware--the label holders I got for my birthday, and chunky pulls that match our kitchen hardware.

Here's a close up.

And the full effect of our office, which is located in the butler's pantry.

Now if I were a good blogger, I'd have written something clever on the chalkboard. MAN! But, I'm pretty excited about how it turned out, even though it took...mmmm 6 months. Thanks for hanging in there to the end!

I'm linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick

also linking up to Miss Mustard Seed

also linking up to Funky Junk Interiors
Whoops! I linked to Thrifty Decor Chick again! Sorry everyone!

Baby Steps

Hello there,

I am making a bit of headway on my projects. I wrote them all down on a list last week. Oh boy, it was a long list! So, I'm trying to just stick to one area. I chose the office, since it'll probably go the fastest and involves the least painting.

I added another jute pencil holder-thingy to the desktop plans. We had this very modern looking pencil holder already. Now there are two! See, it looks less lonely this way.

I have been getting into Mod Podging lately. I really wanted to try Mod Podging the plastic file bin that sits on our desk. I used fabric from Joann's. Seriously, it took me three visits to the store and multiple websites of searching to find fabric. Mr. Wonderful offered to watch Ava so I could browse at my leisure. I was still there for about an hour! I didn't take before pics, as I'm sure you know what a plastic filing tub looks like. I didn't even sand it or anything before I started. I started on one end, first brushed the tub with podge, then the back of the fabric and smoothed as I went along. I did two coats of podge over the top. I trimmed the top edges with a swiss army knife to make it look even. I had to go slow and do some creative folding to make it work, but I'm pretty pleased with the result:

I also did a pretty box that I got a gift in for Christmas. I really like the way it looks together! Mr. Wonderful cleaned the desk off last weekend, so it's really starting to come together. There are a few more pieces to work on, though. Centsational Girl (love!) did a series on organizing and pointed out that when your filing box is pretty it feels less like work to do your bills! So true. In fact, I'm gonna go file right now!