Tally ho, old chaps!

Before we left Sydney I managed to squeeze out one last little DIY makeover. This was one of those projects that I was mulling over for quite a while. A long while, really. We have a grog (liquor) cabinet that we bought 5 or 6 years ago in the US. I liked it a lot at the time but it started to look a bit too traditional for me.

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Then, when we moved to Australia the crappy removalists we had, damaged the veneer in a number of spots.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the cabinet for quite a long time. But when we moved to our last house, the cabinet ended up under an antique picture we have of the Bedale Hunt (it kinda looks like this:

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I took some inspiration from this painting and particularly from a British riding boot:

I doubt it is particularly usual to use a boot as the inspiration for your DIY furniture project, but there you go!

So I took a good look at the damage on the cabinet and figured the least amount of painting I could get away with was to sort out the two front panels and the top. I had originally planned to try leather or fabric on the inset panels and paint a lot of the cabinet, but I was so short on time I really had to cut back to the bare minimum. And I am actually glad I did! I think the wood works nicely with the gloss black paint.

My method: the usual one of taping off, filling, sanding, priming and painting.

Then it was time to use upholstery tacks! I ordered mine on EBay and was looking forward to having a go at using them. I had just enough of them as it turns out (phew!). I would have been pretty peeved if I had ordered short! If you ever use upholstery tacks on furniture, I recommend getting the furniture up on a bench as you get a really sore back. And use gentle hits with the hammer to avoid bending the tacks.

And here is how the cabinet ended up. Sorry for the lack of styling but I literally finished this a few days before the removalists came to pack us up for Hong Kong. Fingers crossed that these guys are better than the last ones and the cabinet survives unscathed this time!