The Work Begins…

Anyway, at some point in the past a well-meaning owner of my little cabinet actually thought painting over the door hinges was a good idea. There’s plenty of rust on them and on the drawer pulls and latches, too, so I set to work removing all the cabinet hardware in the hope I can clean them up some. (Notice the picture of the tool purse. I just had to include that. Every woman needs a tool purse, especially one as cute as mine!)

So with the hardware and doors removed, I started trying to do something with the rolling door above the counter. The bottom slat is completely detached from the rest of the door and I couldn’t get the rest of it to roll up inside very easily. As much as I had hoped to avoid it, I didn’t see any way to figure out the problem with the rolling door without totally removing the back of the cabinet. So…

I’m sure some would think I was crazy for thinking this, but I really thought removing the doors and the hardware was fun. But then prying the back from my cabinet…oh! That’s where the real joy began!

I’m not sure what it was exactly. Just the challenge of trying to remove it all in one piece I guess. Or maybe it was just pulling one-by-one every rusty nail that had held my cabinet together since its birth. I don’t know what was so thrilling about it, but it was fun and when I finally popped the backing off, (in one piece mind you,) I couldn’t help a little pride.

I’m not sure what I thought held the slats of the rolling door together, but the three thin strips of adhesive cloth surprised me. And if they slid along a track, I thought it likely arched upward and across to the back of the cabinet. Instead the track curled around in a semicircle so that the door was supposed to roll in around itself. And I had assumed the track was probably rusty, which would explain why it was so hard to roll the door upwards, but on both sides the metal track was as clean and smooth and white as if it had been put in the cabinet just yesterday.

The backside of the flour hopper intrigued me, too. Have I even mentioned the flour hopper? It’s a metal storage bin/flour sifter built directly into the cabinet. You simply filled the bin with flour, removed the cap on the dispenser, and sifted directly into your bowl. How convenient! Anyway, the back of the hopper was shiny, like-new galvanized metal. And my sifter still had its cap! That’s when I made the mistake of reaching up and pulling the cap off. A plume of dust mushroomed in my face when this dry brown gunk fell from inside. A look down into the sifter made me wonder if they’d been trying to sift bugs because I think at least one of every insect known to man is inside that sifter. I’m reeeally looking forward to cleaning that part out, let me tell you…

That was the extent of what I accomplished Monday, in between uprighting overturned bicycles and tricycles and saving the kittens from my youngest boy and trying to keep him out of their litter box. Projects like these are always more of a challenge where young children are involved, which will make my accomplishments all the more significant, right?

So Tuesday I made the trip to Lowes. On my list…Simple Green, my answer for gunk and grime of all sorts. Flat brown paint for my first coat. (Why brown? It has to be a dark color and while a friend experienced in this department suggested black, I like brown better.) Sandpaper. And cloth tape like what’s holding the slats of that rolling door together. Lowes doesn’t carry anything like and I refuse to resort to duct tape, so we’ll have to look somewhere else for something like that. The lady at Lowes suggested checking a fabric store…?

I planned to start scrubbing the cabinet when I got home, but before I did I took another look at the very top. The thin board there was horribly warped and so I decided if I planned to set anything on top of my cabinet, and I do, then I’d have to replace it. Dittos for the board that lay across the bottom. I’m convinced this cabinet has been in a barn or shed for a long time and it’s gotten plenty wet, which leaves me all the more amazed at its good condition overall.

So I set to work prying the board off the top, which proved to be a much more time-intensive project than I had anticipated. Parts of the board were so buckled and brittle I could pop them up like thick strips of paper, but there were other parts where the glue was still holding tight and I had to use a screwdriver and hammer to get them up, bit by bit. The same proved true when I started working on the bottom board. There were multiple layers of thin board there and I started trying to take up only the top layer, but it didn’t take me long to realize my best bet was just pulling every bit of it up and replacing it with a new piece of board.

The worst part of Tuesday’s work? When I started breaking up the bottom boards I found all kinds of spider egg sacs. Call me a wimp, but I do not do spiders, so the going was a little slow there. But it made me glad I’d decided to pull those boards up! Think of the spiders I might’ve brought into my house because I don’t think I ever could’ve cleaned them all out with those boards still in place!