That Crummy Little Corner Cabinet

I am still working on the little corner cabinet I mentioned the other day, and it has been a series of small annoyances all along the day.  I knew what the cabinet was when I bought it twenty years ago:  an import cheapie made of some sort of pressed fiberboard.  But it was (and still is) charming and I liked it (still do).  But it's a nightmare to work on. 

Some hinge screws have rusted and pulled free.  There's nothing to screw back into because the "wood" is so thin, and I had to improvise by gluing them in place.  But I worry that the fiberboard hasn't responded well to glue, and I doubt that it will hold for long.

Whatever paint was originally used was strange stuff:  it has collected mold.  Although I was able to clean the yuck away with a mixture of bleach and Dawn, the surface has proved alarmingly difficult to re-paint.  It just seems to soak up the new paint and to pickle the color so that it appears mottled.  It seems especially odd that it would pickle since the "color" is nothing more than plain white. 

And we won't even discuss what it was like to attempt to cover the fake "distressing" marks that someone diligently chiseled liberally all around the edges.  I have Real Honest-to-Goodness Distressed furniture (stuff that I have lived with for years and have unintentionally damaged myself), so I'm gonna tell you that they put all that fake stuff in places where it doesn't happen and not at all in the places where it actually does. 

There's also a problem with the cabinet sitting securely because it's on carpet.  I've shimmed under the feet but it still moves alarmingly when I open the doors.  Next step, I suppose, is to bolt it to the wall, and I don't really wanna do that.  Oh well.

When I had the cabinet in my home in the past, I sewed little curtains to pretty up the space behind the screen panel doors and I used a make-do system of push pins and bits of dowel to hold them in place.  All of that stuff has long since disappeared but I still want curtains.  So I've been trying to put something new in place.  This time the make-do system is tiny screws and leftover window blind cord.  (Yeah, I really don't throw away anything useful.)  And it seems to work well enough.....even though I managed to drill all the way through the door in one place.  Grrrrr.

But it's the curtains that are causing a headache.  I hand-sewed a cotton chintz set last night.....and just despised them when I got them in place.  They looked awful because they were too "busy" for the tiny space.  So this morning I cut a new set from an old embroidered green organza curtain panel that has been cut up to serve a number of other uses in the past.  Yeah, those didn't work either--they looked faded and dull. 

Back to the drawing board?  Well, maybe later after I've had a think.  In the meantime, I'm changing the buttons (pink is so much nicer than brown) on a cute little set of fingerless mitts that I will probably never wear.  But, hey, they really Are cute.....obviously, I don't seem to do to well with stuff that is actually useful.

Life is good.
I'm an inconsistent anachronism.
But that's okay; somebody has to do it.


.....Editing to add that I still haven't sewed on the buttons but I did decide what to do about the cute little cabinet (when I say "little" I mean little--it's only 12 inches deep and 16 inches across the front).  No curtains!  When something gets too complicated and it doesn't make sense anymore, go for the simplest option.

The little boxes behind the screen are pretty, as well as useful.  One of them contains mini-desk supplies (see this post).

There's enough room at the base of the cabinet to store the books I'm currently reading, as well as a couple of notebooks, and there's still an empty shelf for more.

I also found and repaired a little basket (on the center shelf) where I can keep my cell phone at night.  And I even figured out a way to secure the cabinet better with the shims so that I won't have to bolt it to the wall.

Now my bedroom seems more calm, as well as having a very useful (although tiny) cabinet.

Now all I've gotta do is relax and enjoy.
Life is good.
Always.