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Aug 28, 2013

The Month We Built an Entire Cabinet



This is definitely the biggest project I have undertaken so far. It started with a simple premise: this year I wasn’t moving again. Since we’ve been married, we have led some sort of nomad life, hanging on to just the things we can carry in suitcases and never looking back. Thus, I was surprised when the time came to sign the lease renewal. We did sign it, and I was suddenly dazed by desperation that kept echoing in my head: we NEED to move! The constant change of environment was part of our lives and we enjoyed it. From one day to the next, my mind turned my cozy apartment into boring and ugly. So, the only solution was to move… the furniture around. In a couple of hours, everything belonged somewhere new, and received different purposes too. The apartment suddenly looked much smarter! We freed this whole corner, which is great when you live in a tiny apartment in NY, but it was now staring at me blank. Faced with this new puzzle, we decided to build. We designed and built the cabinets from scratch, which was a lot of work, but loads of fun.
It looks amazing and we are so proud! How great it is to create something with our own hands.

The work was done exactly there where the cabinet sits today, with almost no space and even less ventilation, which was bad when it came to sanding, staining and painting. We designed the cabinet in a program called Inventor and took the dimensions to a lumber store downtown. Having all the big pieces cut for us was huge, as we didn't have the tools to do it ourselves. Then, we drilled and screwed until we had the cabinet assembled, measuring everything as we went. The doors were very complicated, especially the 45 degree angles, which we had to cut ourselves, but don't they look lovely? We used a small electric hand saw, a Dremel and medium coarse sand paper. Once the cabinet was ready, we stained it with dark stain and painted over it with regular acrylic paint. After it dried, we sanded some areas with medium coarse sand paper. I was surprised by how easily the paint came off and I had to be careful not to make it more shabby than chic. We added some vintage knobs to complete the look. 



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