How I Turned an Old Cabinet Into a Workshop Storage Solution

This video is sponsored by Skillshare. Welcome back everybody. I actually have a fair bit to talk about in this video and to cover. This is a vintage map storage cabinet from the 60s that I'm going to be redoing into a functional storage and work table in my workroom. This video almost never happened, but it did, so stay tuned. My name is Angie and I refinish furniture. Sometimes I paint and sometimes I don't, but I always do what I can to save old pieces from the trash. Welcome to my workroom. I initially saw the ad for this on Facebook Marketplace, and I was immediately drawn to in particular the map drawers. These I thought would be perfect for storing veneer and tools, and it was just the right size to give me ample workspace but still be easily mobile. Now this mess is not black mold. I know it looks like it. It is not. It is the remnants of these panels that they initially had adhered to the bottom and the back side of the panels were black and it just stuck to the adhesive so it looks like mold but it is not. You can see that there is a little bit of water damage here on the bottom but I'm not too worried about that. Having a look at this piece I do know that it was constructed in the 50s or 60s. And it was actually used in a lab. I called these map drawers because typically that's what they would hold. I don't know what kind of lab this came from, but I was told it came from a lab and there was quite likely a number of them all lined up together. Now this was initially listed on Facebook Marketplace for a price and I inquired about it and the person never responded and then suddenly the ad was gone. A couple days later this popped up again at a higher price, unfortunately for me, and in my opinion it was too high a price to pay but I was really drawn to the look of this cabinet and the functionality of it for me so I ended up offering her slightly less and she did accept it. I was told this was solid maple initially in the ad. In fact, it became one of their main reasons for upping the price. I'm not 100% sure that this is maple. I'm leaning a little bit more toward birch and they're very similar woods. I just find birch tends to lean a little bit more yellow than maple does. You'll see at the end I actually add a solid maple shelf to this and you'll see the difference in the color. The drawers were in pretty good repair, except for this one. This looks like it would have had a locking mechanism at some point that obviously has been removed, but I couldn't find anywhere on this piece where there was the insert for the lock. So again, it leads me to believe that there were multiple versions of these and probably the drawers at some point got mixed up. In terms of what to do with this piece, visually, initially my plan was to just clear coat it. I really don't love yellow colored woods. I thought about staining it, but maple and birch are notoriously difficult to stain. I thought about painting it, but when it came down to it, this is a functional piece of furniture for me. Basically, I need this piece to take everything that I'm storing currently in this dresser, combine it with the functionality and storage in this, which is my current workbench. And hopefully when I'm done I will have something that works better for me than my current situation. I really wanted this to have a finish that would be super easy to touch up if it inevitably gets dinged or scratched. And so far for me the easiest finish that I've ever used to touch up is Odie's Oil. With certain finishes like lacquers and polyurethanes, if you get a scratch or ding You can't usually. Just touch up that little spot. You have to remove all the finish from the drawer or the side or whatever gets scratched and reapply it. With Odie's oil, if I happen to ding this or scratch it, all I would need to do is do a very light sanding and then reapply the Odie's oil. I mentioned I didn't like the handles. These are more of what I'm wanting to put on. But as you can see, it's a different size than what was there, which is going to leave this sort of ghost in behind, which can be hard to get rid of. And also these pulls come with tiny little screws, not big machine screws. So what I'm going to end up having to do is plug the holes. I'm going to cut some dowels down to size, add some glue, pop in the dowels, let them dry, and then eventually when I'm ready to do the hardware, I'm just going to screw right into those dowels. I usually just use something flat to tap those down so that they're flush. All of the drawers were cleaned out, but as you can see, there's some residual staining and just years and years of aging, basically. I love using my SurbPrep sander for pieces like this because of the shape you can get right into the corners, makes things super easy. Because these are solid wood drawers, I initially went ahead and just tried to sand through the old finish. It was a bit thick, but I got through it. Now there's a couple of ways you can take care of ghosting from handles like that. Basically what causes it is oxidation and exposure to UV light over time. It will actually change the color of the wood that is exposed. Obviously the wood behind the handle is not exposed so it stays its original color. I haven't had a lot of luck using oxalic acid for this on light colored woods, but I have had really good luck using it on dark woods. I decided to try it anyway just to see. Heads up it didn't make much difference but it did take care of the stain in the drawer. The map drawers for some reason the hardware holes were smaller. The holes were actually smaller than the same dowels I used in the other drawers so I had to drill them up to the same size. You can see some staining on this drawer. I don't know what they spilled on this, but I did try to use oxalic acid on it and no go. I tried acetone, no go. Nothing I threw at that stain would get it out. No idea what it is, I'm just gonna have to accept the fact that it's there and is just part of the history of this. Once I have all of the drawers sanded down and the holes plugged, I set them aside and now it's time to deal with this base. So like I said before, I know this looks like mold. It is not. This piece came with these weird sort of bumpers on it and the back. It's a bit like a fiberboard. Now you do have to be really careful with this time period and I did have a brief moment with this where I worried that there could be asbestos either in the fiberboard or in the adhesive. But there wasn't, it's all good. It's just something to keep in mind when you're working on older pieces like this. So one issue I didn't expect to have with this was actually with the base. I wanted this to be roughly the same height as my last one and to do that I would have to leave the base off. But as you can see here there is no support on the bottom without the base so I have no choice. I have to put this back on. One thing that was weird though these carriage bolts and the plates that they screw into are attached to the same piece of wood. Really this base was held on by the screws. You can see the screw hole here but the carriage bolts literally So when I put this back on, I'm going to have to take the plates off the base and install them on the inside of the cabinet so that when the carriage bolt goes up through, it will actually clamp the base to the cabinet. Although I sanded off the finish on the drawers, I found it so difficult to get through the thick varnish that they used. So for the sides, which are actually a veneered plywood, I'm going to use some chemical stripper. It will make things go way faster. And you can see I'm using a scraper here. I had applied this stripper a while ago, but I got distracted with other things. And when I came back, it was completely dried, but it had softened the varnish enough to easily scrape it off. So that's what I did. The stains here on the front just like the drawer would not come off with literally anything I tried and I didn't want to try to sand too far down because it would leave little divots. I could use some pigments to try to cover them up. I'm not overly worried about it. I don't need this to look absolutely perfect. It's going to be a work piece so I just did what I could for them and the rest will just have to stay. So as I mentioned before, the way they had this base constructed with the carriage bolt and the plate, it wasn't attaching it to anything. So I had to remove the bolt, take the plate off, and add it to the inside of the cabinet. Now this could and did affect the way the bottom drawer slide, but all I had to do was just cut a little bit out of the back of the drawer, and it would slide right on by. I could have recessed the plate into this bottom board, but that was way more work than I was willing to do on a workbench. As you can see, this plinth base is super thick, it's really heavy wood, so I ended up putting the original screws back in that someone had added in later on to hold this to the cabinet, just to position it until I was able to get the carriage bolts in and secured. Apologies on the terrible camera angle there. Because of the way these drawers are, some of these areas are super Super awkward to reach into, let alone try to film. So I wasn't super happy with the oxalic acid on the base. It didn't take out as much of the staining as I was hoping, so I'm opting to actually paint the base black. This will cover up any remaining stains and also match both the wheels that I'm putting on and the new hardware. Because I have no use for a lock on this, I'm going to fill this hole now. I kind of did things backwards here. I had two gifts from two awesome viewers. This was sent to me from Melissa S. It is a hole saw kit. And another gift that I received was from Dax Burnett, and I'm hoping I'm saying your name right. And that was a plug cutter set. Okay, let me explain what I'm doing here. In my head, I thought, okay, well, I'll just pick this particular measurement hole saw and then cut a plug to match that I could just pop in. Except there wasn't a plug cutter this exact size, so now I've created a slightly bigger hole that I can't fill with a plug. And that, in a nutshell, is how my week has been going. The reason I opted to make this hole slightly larger anyway is because it was a really odd size. I couldn't get a dowel to fit it so I thought I would make my own plug but clearly that didn't work out. I didn't plan it very well. That's okay I will show you what I do. In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and add some Odie's Super Duper Oil on the rest of the drawers. Now, you can see this immediately goes super yellow, which is my nemesis in the wood world. I don't like yellow wood, but it is what it is. And like I said earlier, I wanted to have something that would be super easy to maintain and touch up as this inevitably gets things spilled on it or scratched over time. Now you might be watching this thinking this is a heck of a lot of work for something that is just going to be used to keep tools and to work off. And you're right, but for me utility furniture doesn't have to be ugly. I want things that look nice. I let the Odie's oil sit for about two hours roughly, which is a little bit longer than normal, but it was super humid. And then just went in with some shop towels and wiped all of the excess off completely. I need this to be able to move around easily but I also need it to be stable when I need it to be stable. So I'm opting to use the wheels off my old one. You can see here where they used to be but there's a difference. So on my old one the side was one panel and you can see here on the new one The bottom is indented a little bit and these wheels have to go at a specific point to be able to raise and lower properly so what I need to do is screw into the main cabinet for the top holes and then add these little spacers underneath which I just made out of some thin scrap plywood and painted black that I can drill through and attach into the plinth base. I can't attach the wheels until those little painted inserts are dry, so I'm going to focus my attention now on the top. Now this top rail here is a little bit bowed, and because underneath there's a drawer that slides all the way through, I can't put anything in there to space it properly. My hope is, once I put the top on, I'll be able to screw up through that board into the top and it will pull that board up and straight across. I'm opting to use a little bit of wipe-on poly inside the drawers, and I know it says wipe-on and I'm using a brush. That's okay. This is the utility cabinet. I just want to make sure that the inside of the drawers is protected with something. I'm drilling the top three holes first, and then I will attach the wheels to the cabinet, slide the insert underneath the bottom, drill holes to that, and then attach it there. These wheels are awesome for a workbench because it allows you to either have them rolling or you can lift up on the black handle and a piece will lower and sit completely sturdy on the floor. I've been back and forth a few times about what kind of top I wanted to put on this. Initially I was thinking maybe a solid wood top but for this one I opted to go to Home Depot and buy just a very basic prefab laminate worktop. They're scratch resistant, stain resistant. And for this specific application, I think it's going to be perfect. Here's the thing. I bought this countertop before I finished working on the cabinet. And initially I was hoping that the maple would turn out a little bit lighter. I don't love how this looks with the yellow. I think a darker top would have looked nicer, but it is what it is. I had already bought it and unfortunately I was stupid and took it out of the package that I could see it on the piece before I really made up my mind about whether I liked it or not. So by that point it was too late. By the time I was completely done with the piece and had lived with it for a couple of days it wasn't so bad and honestly I usually have The top of my work table covered anyway, but yeah, I would have loved a darker top. I did have a tiny bit of tear out here along the edge cut. I probably should have used a slightly finer blade for this. I did use the masking tape so that did help a bit, but if this was in my kitchen I'd probably be mad at myself. It's not a big deal here. I'm using some epoxy to attach this edge banding. Sometimes you get lucky and the edge banding is iron on. This is not one of those times, so normally I would use something like contact cement. I didn't have any, so I'm just using some epoxy. And that worked just fine. Once I had the edge banding firmly pressed in place, I was able to clamp it up and leave it to dry for the rest of the day. I didn't have any six foot clamps, so basically what I did is I put smaller ones end to end And to make longer clamps. And now I can get started on the hardware. As you can see clearly here in this shot, that sort of ghosting from the previous handles did not go away with the oxalic acid, as it sometimes does on darker wood. But I'm just going to use some touch-up markers, which it's not going to be a perfect match, but it is definitely better than having that lighter color. Honestly, there's enough little dings and marks here and there that this just isn't going to stand out, I don't think. This video is probably really different for you guys than what I normally do because normally I am a stickler for details and here this is utility. I can fuss about these little details for an extra two or three days but in the end it's still a workbench. It's still going to get marked up. One of my missions in life is to learn how to choose my battles and this was a battle I I didn't want to fight. So this is the drawer that had the hole in it and I used some quick wood wood epoxy in there initially and then I added some Timber Mate wood filler on top of it. The texture of the wood filler is going to be a little bit easier to paint over than the epoxy and you'll see how I do that in a short bit. Now that the edge banding has set up I'm just using a fine file here to burnish the edges. This is going to help prevent things from catching on this and tearing it off. Then I just flipped it upside down and trimmed it to the right depth and this exposed another problem. So these countertops normally have almost like a paper backing on the underside. And sometimes I work with different liquids like chemical strippers and all that. I don't want to run the risk of getting anything liquid that spills on the top and runs underneath. So I just decided to put a little bit of tuck tape on there. No one's going to see it. It's going to be on the underside. And it will hopefully keep any liquids from soaking into that substrate underneath. Getting ready to attach the top now, I have to pre-drill my holes that I'm going to screw up through to attach the top. And normally you would just screw straight up and down, but because of the way this is built and the lack of room that I have to maneuver in here, I have to go on an angle, which is fine. And now just a quick moment for today's sponsor. Temperatures during this project were in the high 30s Celsius, and on my breaks, I caught up on some Skillshare classes I wanted to watch. I downloaded the lessons right to my phone. Grabbed a few snacks from the yard and popped in my hammock. The class I opted to watch today was Creative Confidence Learn to Overcome the Critical Voice by Lucy Lambrix and she was actually really funny. I found her super quirky and I really enjoyed this class. Anytime you put yourself out there on social media, in addition to outside opinions, we also have this little voice in our head that likes to tell us we're not good enough. I didn't get to stay outside too long before I had to come back in, but it was super easy to just jump on my computer and pick up exactly where I left off. One of my favorite things about Skillshare is how easy it is to search and tailor your search results to exactly what you're looking for, whether that's by skill level or the time frame you have to devote to it. If you see classes you want to watch later, you can just save them and come back to them at another time. I'm still trying to switch over from iMovie to Final Cut Pro, so I'm watching a lot of those classes right now. The first 1000 people to click the link in the description box gets a one month free trial of Skillshare. I'm already looking forward to my next group of classes. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everybody that watches my videos and your likes and comments and shares. They really go a long way with helping my channel succeed and move forward along with these sponsored videos and I know nobody likes ads but they really do help me continue on with what I'm doing. Nearly every video I produce is at least a week from doing the actual work on the furniture, filming it, editing it, voicing it, uploading it, and putting it out to you. So I'm definitely grateful for the opportunity to have a few of these sponsored videos and I would never accept a sponsorship opportunity from something that I don't personally use. These folding shelf brackets were a gift from Anita Davidson and I knew these would eventually come in handy when I went to create my new workbench. I mentioned earlier about the height of this table. One requirement that I had when creating this was that I needed multiple levels to work on. Side note, I didn't like the screws that it came with so I'm opting for these slightly Slightly larger and thicker black screws instead. Sometimes if I'm sanding, let's say a drawer, I don't really want to have my sander up at eye level, which is what would happen if I tried to sand drawers on top of this. So this shelf is something that I can flip up when I need it and flip it down when I don't. This piece of maple was salvaged from an old super orangey coffee table. You know the one. It's been planed down, sanded down, and I just cut it to the size that I needed. Now here you can really see the difference in color between this maple and what is supposed to be maple on the other thing. I think it's birch but to be honest I don't know for sure. Now I'm opting to use some Odie's Solvent and some of Mr. Cromwell's creative color pigments to camouflage that patched hole. I used three colors. I used yellow, ochre, and titanium white and blended them up with the safer solvent and used it like a paint. This is something that is very hard to teach people to do because it's something you kind of either really have to work at or it's something you already possess and that is just the knowledge of colors and how they work together and how to look at something and then look at a bunch of pigments and figure out how to get very close to the same color. I like to start with the lightest color possible and then build from that and what's nice about using pigments for this versus paints is they're not super opaque or they don't have to be rather. You can use more Safer Solvent if you want something that's a little bit more translucent, or you can use a little bit less if you want something that's a bit more opaque. One thing to keep in mind here is I'm not trying to match the color of the wood you see here. What I need to try to match is the color of this wood with the Odie's Oil on it, which is what it looks like here. While that's drying, I went and started to empty out my old workbench. Now I have legs for days in here. I basically hoard vintage furniture legs because you never know when you're going to need them. And I also have some new sets as well. I'm super happy with how my shelf turned out. You can see, I can put quite a bit of pressure on there. And now it's time to load this thing up. Like I said in the beginning one of the reasons I wanted the map drawers was to store veneer in a way that made it easy to access them. Deep drawers and you're digging through veneer you can easily tear it so these drawers are perfect for this. When I started this video, I mentioned that this video almost never happened, and I guess more specifically what I should have said is I almost didn't make it on time. I was partway through the editing and voicing process when my beautiful little province that unfortunately was on fire a couple of months ago suddenly got hit with basically the opposite problem. We got three months of rain in less than 24 hours. And just a heads up here, if you're sensitive to flashing light, you might want to skip Unbelievable, unrelenting, lightning, flash floods, roads were washed out, it was a mess. A lot of you really enjoyed the storm footage from last time, so here's a little montage of what happened yesterday. These are how many lightning strikes we had here in Nova Scotia in one day. I've never seen anything like it. I did not want to go outside but unfortunately the little brook across the street had flooded and I needed to see if we were in trouble. And this small brook is normally about 10 feet lower than this so this was a bit scary. We had to come in and make sure all the bunnies were ready to go because they live on the lowest level of the house here. We were so lucky we had Minor seepage in the basement. Our neighbor unfortunately was not so lucky and he flooded pretty badly. And you might remember some footage from a couple videos ago from Best Bins who liked to give me furniture rather than having it thrown out. They did not fare very well either. Nova Scotia really got rocked and we're going to be cleaning up here for a long time. But I saw these tires with all of these snails and grasshoppers and little spiders and ants and they're just clinging on to this tire just hoping to live through this. And I can't really explain why but it just moved me so much looking at this because if that's not a visual metaphor for life I don't know what is. So final thoughts on my new work table. I love how solidly this was built. It is like a rock, yet the new wheels make it super easy to move around. I love how deep the lower drawers are and the map drawers are perfect for my veneers and small tools. Having this extra shelf gives me another level which is perfect for sanding things like drawers and I am going to make a I'm going to make a little soft cover for it. All of these drawers slide easily and fit everything I needed it to fit. My one bone of contention here is the top. Again, I don't love this gray color with the yellow. It's not terrible, but it's not ideal either. If I'd finished the cabinet first, I would have gone and got a darker top. This is a little bit larger than my other one, but it moves around super easily despite its weight. And even though I don't love the yellow wood, I do like some of the stains that actually remain. It just gives this piece a little bit of history and doesn't look like something that was made brand new. I know this video is a little bit different than what I normally do, but this is part of my job and I wanted to share it with you. Let me know below what you would have done if this was yours. Would you have painted it? Would you have left it the way it was and just cleaned it? Would you have used a wood conditioner and stained it? I'm interested. One more quick thing about the top which is actually kind of funny is I normally use my table with a cover on it and the cover is the same color as the top so really I'm gonna be looking at gray anyway. As always thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.