But Sandra (I hear you say).... aren't you supposed to be working on your cabinet?
Yes.
Yes I am.
But it seems to be involving an awful lot of sums.... adding, subtracting, multiplying and derision... not to mention the thing with the tens and units.
It's all to do with the number of shelves, divided by the number of shelf supports.... the number of boxes I need, subtracted by the number I actually have..... the amount of 24" wide paper I need, to cover the front of the drawers, given that three of the drawers are 27" wide so will therefore require a 1.5" strip at each side and to complicate matters the paper has a 3" repeat.....both ways.
Who would have thought that upcycling a cabinet would entail so many calculations?
Then there's the internal cubby section in the desk.... it already has two little drawers, but I want to make some additional boxes to fit in the compartments, to hold scissors, tools, glues etc. Which has involved geometry....in the form of nets. A net is a flattened out three-dimensional shape, like a cube or a prism. When cut out, folded and glued, it will make the 3-D shape. Well that's the theory.
I need three different sized boxes like this.... but higher at the front.
This has involved a lot of measuring, scrabbling around in the back of the desk, which is relatively inaccessible and involved a fair amount of frustrated 'language'. I'll make the boxes from thick card and cover the fronts with offcuts of the same paper I'm using for the drawer fronts.
Aside from all the sums, I've now applied two coats of the shellac-based primer, which incidentally smells absolutely vile and has a been a complete bugger to use. It becomes thick and gloopy very quickly, so I've had to thin it down with methylated spirit, the only solvent which works to both thin it and to clean brushes.
Painting the glazed doors on the top section was a breeze... not so easy was scraping the paint off the glass after it had dried. One side was relatively straightforward, but the other side was a nightmare.... no idea why. It was such a pain that I've decided to mask the glass before applying the colour coats of paint, which in itself will be time-consuming and tedious and involve cutting a plethora of different angles.... more geometry *sigh*
I've found a pretty wallpaper to cover the back of the inside of the top section. Of course it's not wide enough, so I'll have to centre it, then cut two strips for each side. More measuring and dividing... I'll also use that to line the drawers and I'm going to make up an essential oil spray mist to scent them.
I've ordered 10 pretty little knobs for the drawers in the base and in the desk section, which worked out at a princely 89p each. In a wonderful piece of serendipity, they'll fit perfectly in one of the pairs of holes left by the original handles so that will save having to drill more.
I'm still not decided on the paint colour for the cabinet as I'm awaiting the tester pots but it's between two pastel shades of duck egg or cornflower blue. It depends which goes best with the paper I'm using on the drawers/inside the glazed doors.
So.... so far so good. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll have it finished in the next 10-14 days then I'll be able to restore some order to the current chaos in the workroom.
I've also been thinking more about reorganising the furniture... hopefully to lose another base storage unit and possibly get rid of the huge desk unit which currently dominates the centre of the room. However, until I've got my new workstation up and running I don't know how well it's going to cope.
I'm also champing at the bit to make some new bunting to go across the curtain rail.... so looking for suitable fabrics. It's impossible to be uncheered by bunting... and making it makes me really happy so it's a win-win.
Happy days...... apart from all the sums.
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