Do WHAT yourself?

I've been reading up on DIY projects.

Okay, mostly I've been browsing Pinterest to see what great ideas I can steal.

But it's time to stop looking and get started!

Here is a picture of my cabinet, in which I lovingly refer to as, "The Beast".  Why "The Beast", you ask?  Because the fucker weighs at least 200lbs, and not only is it insanely heavy, but it is almost 6' tall.  

Awkward.

It's been sitting in my garage for almost a year now.  And before that it sat empty for almost 6 months.  I wanted to scale down a bit so I tried to sell "The Beast".  

No luck.

I have now resigned to using the damn thing, but I hate the look of it.  It's so boring!

So I thought, why not spruce it up before I wrangle up the help to move it into my home?

Here are my thoughts.

Flat black with the inlays on the doors a deep red, possibly some gold leaf surrounding the red (think oriental).  Perhaps even painting the one side with chalk board paint, since I'll be using it in my 'office' anyway.

What do you think?

Now for the inside. 

The top doors open and then slide inward so I thought I could add some hooks and small boxes to the door itself, to utilize the space.  The bottom part can store small bins/totes.  I think the inside would be a different color too...perhaps an eggshell color.

I've even played with the idea of removing the drawer/shelf and adding a hinged fold out table for sewing or craft projects.

Crazy?  Suggestions from the audience?

Another project I'm excited about is one that started today with this great find from The Dover Economy Store. (And also that boring white shelf you see beside it, but I'll get to that later)

Kitty approved

I'd like to turn this into a steampunk treasure.  Think gears, Victorian clocks, with bronze, aged golds and the like.  And it wouldn't be steampunk to me unless there was a bad-ass octopus on their somewhere.  

Now, about that white shelf.  For the past few days I've been trying to decide what to do what it, and it's square brother.  I thought of painting/decoupaging something sleek and modern but since I don't have a nailed down color palette in my living room, I couldn't decide what to do with it.

Well, whilst perusing the internets for steampunk ideas for the trunk, I fell upon this.

Photographer Unknown

Why not decoupage the entire shelf with old newspaper clippings?  I think that would look awesome!

So now I am no a hunt for old newspapers.  Got any you wanna get off your hands?

Now one last project to boast about and then I'm done.

A fellow blogger, Rachael  gave me a great idea to spray paint old cracker or cereal boxes so I have places to store my shit.  

My cousin added to that idea and suggested I use colored duct tape on said boxes to not only make them pretty, but more sturdy.

My first empty box* wasn't that sturdy to begin with so I went with the duct tape idea.

And here is my first attempt...

Cute, eh?

Since I work at a food service type-o-place I'm sure I'll come across more boxes that are different shapes and sizes to play with .  The spray paint idea is still a great one and as soon as I have a more sturdier box, I'm gonna try that!

So that's my DIY post.
I'll post more pics as I finish more projects.  Just don't hold your breath.  Rome wasn't built in a day y'all!

*Can you guess what used to be in this box?  Free bragging rights to the first person who can!