I found this fabulous curio cabinet for $40 on our base-wide swap page! It needed some love but I thought it had potential. Plus, I desperately needed a new piece of furniture to hold plants. My sofa table was out of control with succulents and cacti!! This post will walk you through how I modified the cabinet!
Here is where we started.
Chipped veneer, dirty glass, and awkward retro stencil that probably some people will hate me for removing. Sorry, I just don’t really jive with red. My house is pretty much full of pale minty blues/greens and neutrals. Plus hideous pinnacle beige walls. Thank you, base housing. 😐
Here are some details of the damage:
I was most sad about the backing. I LOOOOVED the fabric on the inside of the cabinet, and desperately wanted to keep it! Problem was, it smelled awful and had several large stains. It had the prettiest little shimmer though, and the coolest pattern. Unfortunately it just had way too damage and had to go. I know, I know. Don’t make me feel any worse about it than I already do!! 😭 I initially had no clue what to do about the veneer, but knew there wasn’t a chance in hell this baby was getting painted! I loved the wood tone and figured I would just make do with the veneer somehow.
The first thing I did was take a razor blade to the piece.
I used the razor to scrape the stencil of, which came off like butta! Then, to the chipped veneer, looking for any other loose or peeling pieces. I razored just above all the peeling and carefully removed it. Then I re-glued anything I could save.
I was kind of at a stand still then, so I moved on and peeled off the floppy veneer backing. After that I realized what was left of the fabric back was real thin and dirty. I said my goodbyes to the original fabric and ripped it all out. A pair of pliers easily took out all the little staples that had been holding the fabric backing on. I triple checked that job because if I didn’t get them all out my new backing wouldn’t sit flush.
Creating a new back:
To make a new back, I ordered a yard of fabric that went with my living room color scheme. I initially looked for something resembling the original but gave up. I went with a fabric that still has a geometric pattern with some color. It’s got different shades of minty blue/green, a little bit of khaki and a little bit of charcoal like all of my pillows. Fabric Guru is my go-to fabric place, p.s.! Their shipping is cheap and they always have great remnant sales.
After I ordered the fabric I bought a 2×4′ piece of birch plywood at Lowes for about $8 bucks. I measured the area I needed the back to fit in and cut it to size with my circular saw. I could have used the table saw as easily but I currently have it stored under my rolling carts and have yet to cut a platform for it to sit on!
With the wood piece cut, I laid my fabric out on top of the board. I ironed it as much as possible. I got one edge nicely cut to size, then sprayed a corner of board with tacky spray I had on hand (pictured below) and got that aligned just how I wanted it. This allowed me to cut the other edges flush without worrying about it wiggling too much… I could have also cut the board smaller and wrapped it around the back then stapled, but I wanted the back to be clean.
I continued to spray the board from the bottom and work up, pressing the fabric out to the edges. Imagine the fabric draped backward over my left arm, while I spray the board with tack glue with my right. Then I would push both my hands up and out flattening the fabric, and repeat. I wish I had a photo of that for you but my arms were preoccupied! Anyways, I wanted a clean, wrinkle-free surface so I worked slowly and made sure to try and press all the air bubbles out toward the edges.
I was left with a few small bubbles that I knew wouldn’t be visible once it was installed, so I decided not to sweat the small stuff (always recommended). Then I took it back inside to iron again, just to be safe. I worked from the center pushing out to the edges. This released a few of those small wrinkles I had left at the end of the hand pressing.
Finishing touches:
Lastly I flipped the cabinet onto its front and laid my back in like a puzzle piece. It fit snug as a bug! I used 0.5″ brad nails in my Ryobi Brad Nailer and just nailed it all along the edges quickly. Worked like a charm!
I was eager to have the back on, so I kind of did this all backwards. I probably should have done all of the cleaning and veneer repair first and added the back last. Sometimes I get ahead of myself. 😬 I let it sit for a few nights while I asked around about repairing the rest of the veneer next. The fabulous ladies in my Maker Meg group on facebook suggested cleaning it with steel wool and linseed oil first, so I did that!
It took a LOT of scum off and evened out the surface. I ended up using wood filler on the missing veneer pieces, despite my better judgement because I can never get it to take stain even though it says it will. 🙄 I just couldn’t think of what else to do. It ended up working out fine when I stained with a gel stain in American walnut. The gel-stain also fixed some of the scratches on the door!
Below you can see my initial before and after (before I put some plants in there).
I swapped my antique deer print with an Antique German Botanical print I have. Seemed appropriate. I also happened to have a copy of the Secret Garden that seemed like it could live there…
Here is the after-after when I actually put a few plant friends in there! 💚✌️🌵🌿
