Recycling Cabinents into a Display Case, and Keeping Busy During COVID

During these weird times...

...@caitycat and myself decided that we'd be substantially more comfortable to hide out back in the town we grew up in, at her parents house. They've got about 2/3rds of an acre out in a rural neighbourhood, as opposed to our 1-bedroom apartment here on the Island.

More than just being comfortable though -- there's a bit more to do. We enjoy living downtown here in Victoria, but when everything has been closed, and you're not allowed to go see friends, it's a different story. @caitycat has been hunkering down, making some jewellery, launching a new website and online store, and signing up for some craft-markets to sell her stuff. Suddenly -- COVID19 grinds everything and anything to a halt.

But this gives us some time to get set up for actually going to these markets. Rather than just loose rings and jewellery all over a table -- we decided to make some kind of display case. Luckily, right before we came to town, her parents had just renovated the kitchen, and there was a bunch of scrap cabinets and whatnots kickin' around.

Since the cabinents were just going to get brought to the dump or left on the curb for someone to take away, I decided to drag it out to the garage, and try my hand at repurposing it and not cutting my fingers off. It looked like the sections with the glass doors could be cut out and utilized for some display cases. Maybe making 3 or 4 of them. So I cracked a beer, and got to thinkin' about how to do this.

Eventually, I settled on cutting it apart as shown above. It gave me three very nice sections at the ends (two on the reverse side that aren't pictured) that could definitely be used, while the two sections in the middle are likely going to be scraps. I got out my jigsaw, and got to cuttin'. After a bit of farting around and making some cuts, they were all separated -- then I started sanding one down to see how it might turn out.

Sanded and Lookin' Okay

I had a bit of extra plywood kickin' around, so I cut out a piece that would fit the bottom. It was starting to come together fairly well, and you could barely tell that it used to be this weird orange-toned kitchen cabinet. Started doing some brainstorming with @caitycat for how she wanted it to look, and we came up with a few things we wanted to do:

Sand it a bit more, and take the last of the stubborn stain off -- then paint the inside, and sidewalls white;
Stain the top and front pieces; and
Install some lighting so all the jewellery is nicely sparkling and alluring;

Dark Wood Stain for the Front and Top Pieces

Now we just have to install the lighting we bought (2m length of LED strip lighting, with variable colour and brightness), and make some little in-set pieces. Hoping to do that this coming weekend, and I'll follow up with another post when the finished product is ready and filled with @caitycat's jewellery!