Retro Filing Cabinet Makeover

Today’s post is a quick one to show you how Hubs made over the filing cabinet for his mancave.

Retro Filing Cabinet Find

We often upcycle roadside rescues. But It’s amazing what you can find left behind inside a rented or newly purchased house. My brother-in-law used to sublet parts of his house.  Over the years many people came and went…. and abandoned their stuff in various rooms. When he finally moved out of the house himself, he wanted to leave a clean slate. That meant completely clearing it of years of accumulation from past renters. Hubs jumped at the opportunity to reclaim this old filing cabinet before it would have hit the curb on moving day. He didn’t know at the time where we’d ever have room for it but he grabbed it anyway.

Filing Cabinet_before_bof.jpg

I’ve said it time and time again, but they just don’t make things the way they used to. Modern filing cabinets today seem so thin and wobbly. This one has definite heft and sturdiness!

filing-cabinet_before-3

The filing cabinet languished in the garage for over a year. When the mancave was done, Hubs turned his attention back to it. It was finally time to restore and put this retro gem back into use!

Filing Cabinet Makeover | Birdz of a Feather | vintage filing cabinet

Paint Match

The colour inspiration came from this Ikea Forsa lamp* I gifted Hubs for his new mancave. The grey-green colour has a definite retro vibe! I’m not one for home decor that’s matchy-matchy, but in this case we made an exception.

Both Hubs and I have the knack for being able to achieve a close colour match by mixing paint together. Hubs mixed a bright green with black and grey and came up with the colour samples shown below. If you don’t have leftover paint hanging around, it’s easy enough to get your local paint store to colour match any colour!

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Prep Work

Hub prepped the filing cabinet by sanding it down and priming it. He gave it a few coats of the custom paint with a spray gun. He also cleaned up the hardware and reinstalled it.

Don’t Forget to Protect Your Floor!

The one thing we always do without fail is to add felt along the bottom of anything that comes into contact with the floor. We purchased a sheet of thick felt and cut it into strips.

We put down a piece of cardboard to protect the floor and tilted the cabinet onto its back to expose underneath.

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We measured and cut each piece as we went, sticking the self-adhesive strips of felt onto the bottom.

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The felt provides a nice buffer to prevent scratches on our brand new hardwood!

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A Timeless Upcycle

We stood the filing cabinet up and put it in place between the recliner sofa and desk, where it’s doing double duty as a side table and storage. But, just for fun, I also temporarily turned it into this filing cabinet planter.

The green paint gives it a fresh new look but it still retains its vintage charm. I love that there’s more than one label slot to mark the contents of each drawer, and those handles are classic!

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As you can see below, it’s a great match for the Ikea lamp. The ‘desk’ right beside it is a hoosier table that we found for only $5 and refurbished for our wedding to display the seating cards.

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The filing cabinet has a great feature: a tray that slides out! At first Hubs was using the tray for his remotes, but then I made him an industrial remote control caddy which cleared up even more space to put his snacks!

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The mancave is a fairly small space (we turned the majority of the basement into my craft studio), but it functions perfectly for Hubs whether he’s chilling out watching a movie or poring over his own hobbies.

Other than using the filing cabinet as a surface to put his snacks, Hubs uses it to store his stamp collection. It’s a hobby he started in 2010 after a visit to the Canadian Museum of History in our nation’s capital. An exhibit showing the historic progression of Canadian postage stamps, which has since closed, sparked a newfound interest in Canadian stamps. I guess it’s only fitting that an old filing cabinet should store even older ephemera 🙂

Pinning is always welcome and appreciated!

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You won’t want to miss what’s coming up next. I can’t wait to show you what we did with this curbside find (hint: it’s not a shelf)!

* [If you’re looking for some of the things we used, we’ve got you covered (disclosure): Clicking on the affiliate links below means we may receive a commission. But don’t worry, you don’t pay a cent more and it helps us make more unique crafts to share with you! Thanks for helping to support our blog!]

 

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9 thoughts on “Retro Filing Cabinet Makeover

  1. Your filing cabinet looks great in green and it makes a wonderful end table.

    • Thanks Paula; Hubs is really enjoying it so I’m glad he had the foresight to save it when his brother was moving!

    • Thanks Linda! We should have shares in the felt industry; we use it on all our furniture upcycles 🙂

    • Thanks Christina; it’s amazing what a change in colour will do. I didn’t care for the hardware when it was original, but love it now!

    • Thanks Marial I was pretty amazed that Hubs was able to colour match the lamp. He’s got a great eye 🙂

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