The Garage Files - ELIZABETH JOAN DESIGNS

The garage files? No, what I meant was the filing cabinet in the garage. You see, I had this old filing cabinet, just sitting around, not being used for anything. (I bought it around the same time I purchased {the dry erase board turned chalkboard.}) For years, I had no idea what to do with it, so there is sat, collecting dust.

At one point, I even tried my hand at stenciling in an attempt to spiffy it up and you can see how well that worked out. Oops.

But then I came across {this} on {Pinterest} and I knew that there was still a future in store for my little metal organizer.

I started out by giving it a good wipe down to remove the dust. And cobwebs, which don’t really go well with anything except Halloween decor. Next, I removed the drawers and sent them packin’.

Stripes are pretty cool and I knew I definitely wanted to put a stripe on my cabinet, but I also wanted to include some type of text. I figured “clean up” was pretty motivational for garage organization, so that’s what was printed on a large waterproof label. The problem was that I didn’t realize that the label I had just printed out on my inkjet printer was actually for a laser printer. Oops #2. The ink attached itself to everything my hands touched, as I struggled to cut it out. Smudgy Smudgerson.

However, I didn’t let a little ink stop me. On went the painter’s tape and the sullied words.

Using semi–gloss white paint, I carefully brushed over the words, being mindful of the tape edges. After a bit, everything was dry. When I removed the tape and letters though, I found that the paint had leaked through (under?) and messed up my cute wording. Oops #3.

So I used a handy dandy craft knife to carefully peel the excess off. It actually worked pretty well.

Then, my hubby helped attach four casters to the bottom, which would make it much easier to move our new garage storage around.

As simple as this project should have been, it ended up being a big pain in the rear because of all the little Oopsies. Luckily, they were able to be recovered, for the most part. (Sorry drawers. Enjoy your new life on the curb.)

The best thing about this project is that it was F-R-double-E. Free. In the future, we may add some sort of dividers along the top to help keep things more upright, but we are happy with how it turned out for now.