Keeping it real

I was fortunate enough to inherit a small china cabinet that belonged to my paternal Grandparents when they were married and was passed on to my Dad when I was young (my Grandparents got divorced and my Grandma wanted a fresh start, I guess!). It's been sitting in my Dad's living room, waiting for the day I had the room in my own home for it. Well, that time has come, so a few weeks ago Chuck and I drove to Cincinnati and loaded it up and brought it home.

It needed some TLC, but it's a special case. It has colored wood inlays in the doors, preventing me from slapping a couple of coats of paint on it to freshen it up. Plus, I grew up with this cabinet - how could I change it from what I had always remembered?

Here's a bad pic of it - you really can't see how dry and damaged the wood is in this pic.

Even worse was the painted inside... all chipped and dirty.

Yah, it was pretty bad.

What you can't see is the smell. My Dad is a smoker, and so the poor cabinet had been soaking up cigarette smoke for 30+ years. Lovely.

I wanted to clean up the outside without changing the finish of the cabinet, and was deathly afraid of trying to sand it (some of the inlays were chipped, etc.), so I found something to try online. I read where someone used a mixture of white vinegar and olive oil to nourish the wood and it brought the piece of furniture back to life. 

So I mixed up the vinegar and oil, and after the initial craving for a salad, I began to wipe down every inch of wood on the cabinet and watch the color and depth come back to it. It was awesome! A bonus is the vinegar also got rid of the cigarette smell!

I let the cabinet continue to soak of the oil and vinegar and air out in the garage, and Chuck encouraged me to give it one last wipe down with linseed oil to give it a great finish and an even better smell (no croutons needed).

To address the inside of the cabinet, as much as I wanted to match the original green, I thought I may be able to come up with my own shade of green using the paint that I used on the garage stairs, mixed with some white from other projects. And I just so happened to have some leftover contact paper from the kitchen cabinets that was a similar shade of green with a pretty white pattern on it. So I gave it a shot!

I'm really happy with how it turned out! We just moved it into the house today, but it's going to sit empty for a while - I have 2 other small china cabinets to refinish (with stain - they are a mess) that we found on Craigslist, and I want to wait till all 3 are in the house before I start to divvy everything up and fill them up! I will be posting about refinishing them soon!