Kitty Kastle

So I have this cabinet...

Dave and I found it next to a dumpster at one of our apartments. We've used it for many purposes around the house but now it's to become the cabinet that holds all our cat stuff and a place for the cats to sit and relax in the sun. My cat's full name is Sir Basil T. Crumblebottom Lord of the Dragons, so I felt it fitting to give him his own dragon castle to lord over. Thus this week's project is turning this white cabinet into a proper castle. I've never painted a piece of furniture so I started this project by researching how to paint furniture. Most of what I read said sanding, primer paint, then any top coat paint I want. So I started by giving the cabinet a good washing. Then I took some very rough sand paper to it, just by hand to rough up the surface.Then I took some primer paint, just whatever I found at the store that said all surfaces, and covered all five sides in a fairly thick coat and gave the back side, which was a dark brown, a second coating. I also gave the inside a coat even though I didn't sand it and I probably should have.

The paint can says it dries in an hour so I left it for two before drawing the front of my castle. After spending probably 2 hours drawing all the little cobblestones just on the front I decided to draw just outlines for the other walls.

I let it sit over night before starting with the colors. At the store I found little selection in tiny paint cans but I found a black and a white latex paint that said it was good for wood. It was quite difficult to work with though, it was nice that it dried so quickly I never worried about dragging my sleeve through it but it dried so quickly I felt I lot a lot of paint from it drying on my palate (which was just a plate). It had good coverage though and only needed one coating. This is what it looked like after 8 hours of work.

The grey is just the black and white latex paint mixed together till I liked the shade. The blue is just some acrylic craft paint mixed with the primer. I would have mixed it with the latex paint but my little 8oz can was running pretty low and I still had all the dark grey of the grout. It took another 16 hours to finish the cobblestone pattern on the outside and the inside.

The brown of the doors and the middle shelf is just 'teddy bear brown' acrylic paint which had started to solidify so I added some of the primer into the bottle and shook real hard. It still didn't quite mix together which added some streaky-ness which I liked and felt it gave it the appearance of real wood. My yellow and red craft paints that I had originally planned to use didn't have nearly the coverage I needed and would have taken many coats and lots of time for drying so I headed back to the store for some more latex paint. What I found was enamel paint but it also has excellent coverage and I found out dries slower then latex which for this occasion wasn't a plus since I had to let it sit over night before I could give my coins and rug their golden accents.

Last step was little details and it was my favorite part. Spent hours deciding on a design and plotting it out as best as I could. Spent some time trying to figure out how to make the gold look like coins. Here are the results: