resurrecting the dead

One of the byproducts of our most-recent move is that Better Half and I have realized just how little we have in the way of furniture. Two dressers, a bed, two futons, an arm chair, a desk, a desk chair, and three particleboard bookshelves (only 2ish of which actually survived the move) is about it – collectively. Not a whole lot to stock an apartment with, that is for sure.
Well, like any good Irishman, I had one priority in mind – I had to find someplace to put my alcohol. Our kitchen is on the smallish side (the ironic thing is that we are pretty sure the kitchens in the one-bedroom models in this complex are significantly larger), so that rules that out, and we do not even have a pantry. After doing some shopping around, we came to the conclusion that commercially-produced liquor cabinets simply were not in the cards – they ranged in price from “just” $200 up to $2000 and beyond, very rapidly. Considering that we do not even have a “real” couch, this simply was not an option. Time for alternative solutions.
As fate would have it, a few days later we stumbled across the perfect item, pictured below:

Some of you might be able to identify it right off the bat… others will not. I might get around to telling you. Unfortunately, this particular piece of furniture was not in the best of shape… its finish was coming undone, the doors were… functional, but barely, and it did not really fit into our decoration scheme. On the flip side, it cost all of $10. It is all trade-offs, right? Well, after about another $20 in supplies, and about four hours out of my time (hey, I was unemployed… my time was effectively free), the end result is featured below:


As a brief aside, Krylon spray paint is not nearly as durable as I had hoped. Easy to apply, relatively run-free (though the third picture betrays me on that point), and it stuck to bloody everything (including my toes – note to self, no sandals when spray painting in the future). However, after it had dried for over 48 hours, we went to stock the cabinet, and set a bottle on the inside (also painted). A few minutes later, we picked up said bottle to move it, and it took a ring of paint with it. Not good. And this was after multiple coats, to boot. The inside is now lined with bar towels, which is slightly annoying/disappointing.
However, any way you cut it, I figure it is a fairly good second life for an RCA Victor LP cabinet. We had to replace its slider knobs as well as paint it (the original knobs had some funky verdigris growing on them that absolutely nothing would remove), but the new ones work pretty damn near perfectly, if you ask me. The cabinet is large enough to handle even the largest Absolut bottle (purchased before their assinine commercial campaign), and its style is unquestionable.
And it cost about 30 bucks. I can live with that.