I’m always thinking about how I can re-purpose items that I have in my home rather than adding more garbage to the landfill and spending money to buy something new. That’s usually how my DIY projects come about. I have something that I’m not using and I don’t want to throw it away. I did try to give it away on my Buy Nothing FB page but it just sat and I didn’t get any nibbles. That is how I came up with my File Cabinet Makeover Before and After.
I love using that page to give stuff away, I’ve been able to get rid of stuff that I thought for sure we were going to end up hauling to the dump but people wanted it. Check to see if you have a Buy Nothing page in your area. It’s great for getting rid of stuff and you feel good that somebody is going to get more use out of it.
I needed more storage for my fabric., I sew for fun and you just collect mounds of fabric. I don’t know how it happens so fast, you buy some, people give you some. You find stuff at garage sales in the free bin and you just have to take it. So my fabric stash was starting to overflow and I thought if I spruced up the front of the file cabinet I could use it for fabric storage
I did some research:
I’ve seen some really great makeovers on Pinterest. I didn’t want to paint the entire thing, it would take several coats and I just wasn’t ready for all that so I looked around to see what I had. There were a few square picture frames sitting around. I don’t usually have square pictures so I just took the wooden frames out and painted those with paint that I already had of course.
The squares in the middle were tiles leftover from our shower when they built our house so I painted those too. I found pulls from some old cabinets, don’t ask me why I have all this stuff but I painted those also with my blue paint. After everything was dry I glued the frames and tiles onto the front. After that, I screwed in the cabinet pulls.
It’s not great, I don’t love it but it works and it’s not the same original boring front. I used what I had so it was a very budget-friendly project and it fits right under my counter where I keep all my sewing stuff. It holds quite a bit of fabric so I don’t have that clutter sitting around and I feel good that I repurposed something and kept it out of the landfill.
What projects have you done where you repurposed something that you had already?
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