From Trash to Treasure - part 4

Small stars in silver & white paint

Enter a new chapter of my ongoing journey of re-purpose a set of cabinet doors. With delays, problem solving, and daily life, this part of the process took a bit longer then it should have but I will take you through this part of the adventure. 


All about the details
Where we left off on Part 3, I had just put in the main 'constellations' on the doors. I ended up going back through and started putting in the smaller stars in the Ralph Lauren metallic silver paint and slightly watered down white acrylic paint. I didn't want the star clusters to completely take over the doors so I kept my focus on the 'Milky Way' and did what I could to make it feel like organic placement. Once dried, I used a gold glaze paint to put in the lines that went through both doors along with the inner trim of the panels. Though the right color and feel that I wanted to have, I was just not fully satisfied with how the paint handled. It was too blobby and uneven for my taste. Honestly, it was a rather frustrating issue to have which caused me to step away from the project for a day or 2. I knew that I needed to figure out another solution but if I fussed with it, I knew I would screw up with the project as a whole. 

Refurbishing the original knobs

During my break from the doors, I put my focus on the knobs. Like I had mentioned in a previous blog, I had decided to reuse the original knobs that came with the doors since I wanted to have something that actually went with the color theme and feel I was aiming for. As I did with the doors, I took some sandpaper to them and took off what ever junk that was on them. I had recently purchased a 2 part apoxie called Apoxie Sculpt off of Amazon.com originally for a totally different project that I had planned but decided to use a little bit what I was aiming for. Following the directions on the containers, I went ahead and did a stylized sun design on one knob and a star on the other. With how small of an amount I used and how the environment is at my place, I only had a tiny window of opportunity to work with the apoxie before it dried. Allowing it to cure completely, I did a little sanding before spraying both knobs with the same color I did the doors, followed by a light over glaze of silver to mimic the 'Milky Way' on the doors. 

Problem Solving

Un-tapeing the doors

As I had mentioned before, I just wasn't satisfied with how the gold paint was not really doing what I was wanting to achieve. The gold glaze was lumpy, uneven and left visible brush strokes. Taking a couple of days to figure out a solution to my issue, I ended up coming up with the insane idea of gold leafing around the inner boarder of the panel. Since I had never done gold leafing before, this was going to be a bit of a learning experience for me. Following the directions on the packaging, I dived into this new material for me and started work on the doors again. With the occasional moments where I would get gold leaf glued to my fingers, I made my way around first one door then the next. I actually enjoyed the seemingly uneven/unfinished look that the spottiness of the gold leaf created. 

Now what about the gold lines on the doors? Gold leaf wasn't going to be the answer. Digging around among my supplies, I ended up rediscovering that I had metallic sharpie markers. So using the gold marker to rework the painted gold lines then the silver on some of the constellation stars. I also ended up using a bit of the gold marker on the door knobs for a little added color. 

After 2 layers of clear matte spray paint

There was another issue that was bugging the hell out of me about the doors. The base paint that I used was, well, too shiny. The color was perfect but I wanted to not have the doors shiny enough to make out a person's reflection. Solution? Strangely enough a clear matte coat. Removing the tape that I was using to mask off the wood in order not to get the other paint colors in locations I wanted, I took the doors outside to be sprayed. After one or two coats over the doors, the annoying shine actually went away much to my relief. I ended up giving the knobs a coat of the matte finish as well just so they would be at the same appearance as the doors themselves. All is left to do now is prep the doors for hanging and completely reassembling them. 

To be continued...