I was offered this cabinet by a friend of a friend, and for some reason, I was just drawn to it. Upon closer inspection, the entire cabinet is handmade! Even the decorative carvings around the glass in the doors are done by hand. I guess that explains my interest in it. But let’s be honest…this thing is a hot mess. It turned into basically a jigsaw puzzle that I had to put together, and then figure out which pieces were salvageable.
Below are the front and back images when I started. And yes, the entire thing is literally being held together by shrinkwrap!
I wanted to keep as much of the original wood (and character) as possible, and as it turned out, it was mostly the inlay panels on the top and back that had deteriorated beyond repair. These were easy enough to replace and didn’t impact the style or character of the cabinet. The structural pieces were generally salvageable. This is the pile of “parts” that I started with.
And so the repair began. And continues today. I had to literally start from the ground up on this makeover. Here is the beginning step of reconstructing this cabinet.
Stay tuned as I navigate this reassembly project and bring this gorgeous old cabinet back to life!
