Bathroom cabinet refurb

Things nowadays are often poorly made. Have you noticed this? So many things that used to be sturdy metal or wood are now highly plastic and/or highly flammable. These "convenient" objects seem to be designed to last 1 year in your home and then a million more years in some ocean garbage island. A great example of this? Bathroom cabinets. Ours was getting quite grubby and old, so I searched around for a replacement. But what I found in my price range was molded plastic, and much lower quality than the item I was replacing.

Total Rubbish

Despite the disappointing options, I had to do something. Our bathroom cabinet was having ISSUES--look at this rust!

So my next idea was, "What if I renovate this thing? Maybe this rust is just cosmetic and can be fixed?" The cabinet was made in Bellevue, Kentucky, USA, and obviously of a sturdiness and quality that I can no longer find. Our house was built in 1958 and I expect the cabinet dates to around that time too. It's made of metal and glass with adjustable shelves. Could it be... saved?

Made in Kentucky, USA

Here's how I gave remodeling the bathroom cabinet a shot!

Step 1: Remove from wall. This just involved a screwdriver and some persistent jiggling and pulling.

Step 2: Sand the rusty areas to smooth them out and remove debris and crud. I recommend doing this outside or in a garage. Then I washed off the areas and let them dry.

Step 3. Treat rust areas. I used a product called "Rust Reformer" from Rust-Oleum (Vernon Hills, IL) that claims to "instantly transform rust into a non-rusting, flat-black paintable surface" and also it prevents future rust. It seemed to work!

 

Step 4: Tape off everything not to be painted (the mirror, mainly).

 

Step 5: Spraypaint! I hit this with 3 coats of white paint applied within about 5 minutes of each other, then let it dry for a day. Then I removed the tape.

Step 6: Reinstall!

Glass shelves reinserted.

Don't forget to take before & after photos with stuff inside.

 

Before: Squalor

After: Oh Thank Goodness

I'm really pleased with how this turned out. Of course it's totally practical to fix something I already have instead of throwing it away and purchasing a new (worse) thing. But sometimes that's hard to remember in a culture so primed to Buy More Stuff.

How about you? Any good tales of refurbishing something and giving it new life?