Metal Filing Cabinet Transformation!

I am in desperate need of a filing system. I have papers that are currently being stored in a plastic bag (no judging please). It is annoying when I am trying to find something, and it takes twice as long as it would have if it was neatly filed away.

I decided it was time to get a filing cabinet and get organized! I started looking around and was finding ones that I liked but were too pricey which left me with metal filing cabinets. I really do not like metal filing cabinets. They are tinny sounding and usually come in either beige, gray or black. The decision was finally made when I found a metal filing cabinet in decent shape at Good Will for $2. My thought was for $2 I could try to make it a little more appealing and if it didn’t work it was only $2.

Let’s check it out!

Here are some of my papers. The rest are in my plastic bag.

The cabinet was of course beige, but the drawers were intact and worked well.

I forgot to tell you it was really a mess. Probably why it was $2.

There were also dinosaur stickers on both drawers that needed to be removed.

To combat the rust, some kind of dark substance, and of course the stickers that had to be removed, I pulled out the big three, Goo Gone, Soft Scrub with bleach and Rust Stain Magic and got down to business.

The stickers were pretty easy to remove. I put Goo Gone on top of each sticker and let it sit while I worked on something else.

When I came back I used a scraper to get them off.

I tackled the rust stains next. It took a little elbow grease, but they came off.

The black substance came off with Soft Scrub and more elbow grease.

Nice and clean!

One thing I didn’t like were the handles. They were too industrial looking.

I decided to try filling them with Bondo. I glued a piece of wood inside the handle so I would not have to use so much Bondo.

Bondo is amazing. It worked like a charm. You could not even tell that the handle had been there.

While I was at it, I removed the lock, placed a piece of cardboard on the back and then filled it with Bondo.

To make it look less like a metal cabinet I asked my husband to cut some trim to put on the drawers.

I used Liquid Nails to put the trim on.

It was easy to work with.

Love the way it looks!

I put a little spackle in the corners and let it dry overnight.

I put on one coat of Zinsser Primer.

I used Annie Sloan Aubusson Blue Chalk Paint on the cabinet.

I use the tops of containers to roll my paint’ It works just as well has the ones in the store and washes up easily

First coat.

It took three coats to get full coverage

I went through my box of cabinet doorknobs and found these. Also dressed it up with some very nice (but inexpensive) aluminum feet I found on Amazon.