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Make A Storage Unit From Salvaged Materials. Step 1: Painting

Would you ever think that these dreary cabinets:

could turn into this?

It just goes to show you that with a little imagination and inspiration, you can turn salvaged materials into something fun, useful and totally unique.

Let me fill you in on the details. As you already know, we completely gutted and remodeled our house from top to bottom. During demo, we made sure to save as many cabinets, doors and random (but potentially useful) things as we could so that we could reuse, recycle or repurpose the salvaged materials instead of just throwing them away. These solid oak upper cabinets from the den were two of the pieces that were able to be saved:

Pretty uninspiring, right? (And please avert your eyes from the disaster that is our garage).

We had two of these babies, so I schemed up a plan to turn these upper cabinets into a single base cabinet unit for my craft room. There were a few steps in these cabinets’ metamorphosis that I’ll fill you in on over the next few days, but first here’s a quick painting tutorial on how the cabinets went from dark and dated to fun and fresh.

This is all you’ll need to get started painting your salvaged cabinets (or any other wood furniture):

~ salvaged cabinets

~ medium grit sandpaper

~ 1 quart oil-based primer, like Kilz

~ 1 quart latex paint, color of your choosing

~ water-based polyurethane, finish of your choosing (I used Minwax’s satin finish)

~ foam roller and paint tray

~ foam brush

~ wood filler

~ screwdriver, pliers and hammer

1. Remove handles and molding. Since I was going to use these upper cabinets as lower cabinets, I removed the crown molding that had been added to the top of the cabinets – it came off easily using the back of a hammer. The handles were also in a funky place for lower cabinets, so I just removed them with a screwdriver. The last step was to remove all of the nails that had been used to secure the cabinets to the wall – they were finishing nails without a head, so they pulled out easily with a pair of pliers.

2. Fill in the holes. Not surprisingly, all of the nails and handles that I removed left behind bunches of unsightly little holes. I just grabbed a tube of wood filler and crammed a bunch of filler into the holes. Don’t worry about being too tidy here because you’ll sand off the excess later on.

3. Get sandy. You’ll want to go to town on your cabinets with medium grit sandpaper to remove any slick finish from the cabinets so that your primer can easily adhere to the surface. This is also when you’ll sand off the excess wood filler for a nice, even finish.

4. Bust out the primer. Oil-based primer is just the ticket for painting wood – it’s super sticky and provides a great base for your paint. Don’t worry that it’s oil-based – latex paint can go over oil-based primer, just not oil-based paint. Funky rule, I know.

While some people swear by brushes, t when I’m applying the primer to wood I like to use a foam roller followed up with a foam brush for any tricky corners or drips. I find that brushes leave behind brush strokes that can drive you crazy, while a foam roller leaves a pretty smooth finish. Here’s what the primer looked like when I tried to use a brush that I had on hand rather than buying a foam roller:

See what I mean? It can look pretty bad without a roller.

But don’t worry about your primer being even and perfect – it won’t be and it doesn’t need to be. All you need to do is make sure to get a little primer on every surface that you’re going to paint so that the paint will stick.

5. Roll on the paint. You’re nearing the finish line at this point! My cabinets took two coats of paint, and in all honesty could probably have used a third coat (sadly, I am lazy and decided to just go with two – still looks pretty good). I chose to paint over the plastic inserts on the cabinet doors because I hated the color but liked the pattern – if I ever grow tired of the inserts, I can just remove them and add fabric, paint them in a cool mosaic pattern, etc.

6. Protect the finish. The last step in this painting project is to slap a few coats of polyurethane on the cabinets to protect the finish from nicks, water rings, or anything else that might hurt the paint. Be sure to smooth out any drips, as they will turn yellow.

See, painting furniture isn’t so hard!! Stay tuned, I’ll be filling you in over the next few days on how to create a countertop for the cabinets with a salvaged door, how to assemble your new cabinetry, and how to customize the countertop with a colorful finish.

Check out steps 2, 3 and 4 for the finished cabinet.

Saving Smokey Furniture

I recently received an email from a lovely reader who was scouting for ways to save this lovely buffet:

Here’s the scoop on her problem:

Hi Liz! We just got some really nice wood furniture. But it came from a house where someone smoked at least a pack of cigarettes a day for many years. The actual wood has a residual smell of smoke on all of it. Do you know what product we could use to try to mask/get rid of this smell? If there’s nothing we can do, we’ll just live with it, and keep our windows open as much as possible until the smell subsides…but I thought you might have an idea? If you have no idea, no worries – just thought I’d check with you since you’re my go-to blogger for all things home improvement and design related!

Since flattery works every time (I’m blushing!), I wasted no time digging into this dilemma. Smoke-smelling furniture is a problem that we’ll all likely encounter at some point, given that cigarettes were once practically a way of life. Since that practice has now gone by the wayside, I did a little research and found these tips to help you combat that pesky smell:

1. Soak it up. Before you start scrubbing away at your pretty wood furniture, you may want to try a few of these simple methods that may eliminate the smell by absorbing the odor, without running the risk of harming the wood:

- Sprinkle baking soda on the furniture. Be sure to do a test patch in an inconspicuous spot before sprinkling baking soda all over the furniture – if nothing happens, then you’re in the clear and can sprinkle it all over the furniture. After a few hours, vacuum up the baking soda. Repeat as necessary.

- Place fresh coffee grounds into coffee filters and tie them closed. Place these little pouches of coffee on the furniture and spread them out to cover more area. Leave them there for several hours.

- Dab a cloth in vinegar and set it on or near the furniture. Leave it there for a couple hours.

- Cut up an onion and place the pieces on a piece of plastic wrap on the furniture. Allow the onion a few hours to do its work and discard it.

- Place bowls of crushed charcoal around the furniture and leave it overnight.

2. Scrub a dub. The reason that cigarette smoke is such a difficult smell to get rid of is because the nicotine from cigarettes actually soaks into (unfinished) wood, and also leaves a nasty residue on the surface of wood furniture regardless of whether it has been sealed. Even though it will pain you to do so, the word on the street is that you’ll likely have to scrub the wood with a wet solution to remove the layer of nicotine from the wood. When you scrub the wood, you’ll want to use a stiff plastic brush and a cleaning solution. Be sure to use a brush with flexible bristles – you don’t want to scratch all of that gorgeous wood! And to protect your wood from warping or staining as much as possible, be sure to dry the wood thoroughly with a cloth (do not leave any water pooling on the wo0d), and leave the piece to dry for a day or two indoors – don’t leave the wood in the sun, as it could cause the wood to warp like crazy.

3. Clean it up. There are a lot of different opinions on the best cleaning solution to use on the wood – here are a few of the top contenders:

- Murphy’s Oil Soap

- 1/4 cup of Witch Hazel and several squirts of Dawn dish soap.

- Lysol Basin and Tub Cleaner

- 50% white vinegar, 50% water

- Lemon or orange oil cleaners

It is likely that the wood will have to be cleaned several times before the smell is gone (or faded enough so that it’s no too noticeable), and in some cases it may never disappear. Arm yourself with air fresheners like Arm & Hammer Deodorizing Air Freshener to help eliminate any lingering odors. Some people even go so far as to polyurethane the wood if the smell is not completely eliminated. The theory is that the polyurethane seals the odor into the wood so that you can no longer smell it. This seems like an absolute last resort, and I would recommend speaking to a furniture store before taking this step.

Have you guys encountered this problem before? How did you deal with it? Have you tried any of the tips above and, if so, how did they work? Fill us in!!

This post is shared with Hooked on Houses.

Sources for this post include the following: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.