I really liked our TV cabinet, except for the colour, and the fact there were no doors. Well, it had one glass door, the other our kitty cat bella managed to smash into pieces when she was running around like a crazy person one day. Suffice to say, things got dusty, and looked cluttered.

Instead of getting a new cabinet, I decided to give it a bit of a makeover. I added two doors on either side, and gave it a few coats of white paint. The problems I ran across were many. Mainly, I bought the wrong hinges. I only worked that out after I had opened all the packages, and read the instructions:

See where is says “drill a 35mm hole”? Yeah, well, I don’t have the proper tools to do that. So I was a genius, and improvised:

So I went happily on my way, glueing and drilling and screwing all the little pieces of chipboard onto the hinges, all the while thinking “man I’m smart, I’m going to blog about this!”

…

It didn’t work. Physics and mechanics and engineering beat me.

This is my fed-up face. It happens a LOT when I’m DIY-ing around the house, because a lot of the time I find I don’t have the right tools or I’m not strong enough to finish the job myself. And it’s always when no one is going to be around for the next 6 hours, so my impatience takes over and because I can’t finish the task RIGHT NOW, I usually chuck a little tantrum. There is sometimes a little bit of mild screaming. The dogs think I’m a weirdo.

In this particular project however, I just trundled back to Bunnings (I practically own shares in that place) and bought some very simple little hinges, which I screwed and glued the doors on with. From that point on it was smooth sailing.

TADA!

I think it turned out pretty well, it’s understated, and keeps everything nice and tidy. It also lifts the room with the dark floors and other dark furniture. The only problem is the paint, it’s water based enamel, and I didn’t prime the cabinet properly first, so it scratches really easily. I put a coat of estapol on the top, which has sealed it pretty well (but is also the slightest bit yellow), but we’ll have to be really careful of the sides and edges, they may need touching up regularly. Total cost was about $40 ($60 with the wrong hinges).

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