New Year, New Post!

Hello long-lost blog! It's a new year and a new chance to stay on top of things in the blog-o-sphere. While my posts are sporadic, I'm hoping to put up more tutorials this year, so at least they'll be semi-interesting instead of some personal moaning about law school. Speaking of which, that's almost done with (graduation's in MAY!), so come summer I'll be MIA for a few months while I study/take the bar, then I'll be back for another few months while I (hopefully) work and wait for results. But, while that's going on, I'll likely have more free time and, thus, more time to post! Woot!

Ok, let's get on with it. With my new soon-to-be career getting underway, I've been, slowly, trying to transform my craft/junk storage space into a real-life, functioning office/craft room. First stop, besides pinning many, many organizational ideas, is to implement some storage space to stash all my stuff. I have tons of paperwork laying around everywhere, so I figured what better way to store it than in a file cabinet. So without further ado,

Today's project: FILE CABINET RE-DO!




Here's what you need:

File Cabinet (I got mine at Thrift Town for $7.95!)
Painter's Tape
Chevron pattern (found here)
Spray Primer - make sure it's suitable for metal surfaces
Spray Paint in your desired color

1. First I cleaned my file cabinet with a little soap and water and let it dry. Then I removed all the hardware and sprayed it down with the primer - this took a couple of coats, but it dried pretty quickly




2. Print out your chevron pattern. I printed only one copy and cut along the lines so I had chevron strips. If you're using the same chevron template I did, I used the dark portions (the positive) as my guide and basically taped where the white stripes (the negative) would go (you can see in the photo below what I mean). I took the top part (positive stripe) of my chevron pattern and taped it to the top of my cabinet. Then I used that as a guide to tape off the negative stripe below it. Then I took the second (positive) portion of the chevron template and taped it below that. Then taped off the 2nd negative stripe below the 2nd piece of the template.




I continued taping until I reached the bottom of one side, then I shifted everything over to the front of the cabinet and continued to repeat until I had taped all outward facing sides (I chose not to paint the stripe the back or the top). The template isn't long enough to reach the entire side, so I just kept the tape attached to the template and shifted it as I went along. This was pretty time consuming, but once I did once side and got the hang of it, it started to move a little faster.

3. Grab your colored spray paint and begin painting! I painted in light, over-lapping layers all around, then repeated with a couple of coats until there were no streaks and the primer was fully covered. Be careful not to paint it too much though, because you don't want it to get so wet that it begins to drip. Let it dry a few minutes (maybe 5), then remove the tape. You can touch up the uneven parts with a paint brush if you want. Let it dry overnight.




4. Finally, I decided I wanted a more modern look, so I replaced the hardware. I just went to Home Depot and picked out a new set that I liked better and that matched my paint color - if you do this, be sure to bring the old handle with you so you can make sure the screw holes will be equally-spaced. Then I installed the new handles and kept the old ones for a future project. Voila!




Hope you enjoyed my file cabinet re-do.  Stay tuned for future projects as I continue with my Office/Craft Room Clean-Up!