Cabinet

A while back, I bought a cabinet on Craigslist. $5. I liked it because it had the ball and claw feet that our pool table has. I had big plans for this little cabinet. Unfortunately, I realized the cabinet was not real wood so I wasn't going to be able to sand and refinish it. So I decided to paint it. The pool table is black and brown. There are areas that are distressed and the brown shows through. This is what I wanted to do with the cabinet. So....to Lowe's. I bought brown paint and black paint. Latex. First Mistake.

So, first I sanded. A lot. There were some areas that the particle board was chipped off and I was trying to sand them out. However, this did not really work. So, I got creative. I used the spackle that is made for nail holes. I put some into the crevices and let it dry, then I just sanded it out again to make it level. That part was kind of fun.

After that was dry and sanded, I was ready to paint. So, I painted the first brown layer. Second Mistake. I recommend starting with a primer. The paint did not stick to the particle board very well. (If you are aware of these things, please do not laugh at me).

After the first coat was dry, I did a second. Then I painted the first black coat. I did two. of the black too. The only difference is, I didn't pain the balls on the feet.

After all the paint had dried (over night). I decided to try to distress it. I found something that resembled sand paper and distressed a few areas. Mistake number...what is that? Three?  Because I used latex paint, when I tried to distress it, it took off the paint in peels. Not slightly distressed, but in peels. It worked okay on the edges and the corners but when I tried to do a spot on the top, it just came off in a square. Not a nice little scuffle mark, but a perfect square. Not really the look I was going for. So I repaired the missing spot (by painting it again) and just stuck with the corners. The reason it was a mistake to paint the first two coats of brown paint is, as mentioned above, ALL the paint came off. I could have saved time and just painted the black and distressed to the wood. Oh well. At least the balls are brown. ;)  Attached the doors and...done!