Repurposed Armoire

My kids have too many toys.  It is a constant battle between me and the toys!  I needed something to help hold and organize some of them.  But I also wanted it to somehow mask, or somewhat hide the toys.

 I found this baby on Craigslist for $30!  YUP, $30 for this solid, lovely piece! Of course it looked nothing like this picture.  I had to spend many hours on her to get her looking this good!  Now I know she was meant for a TV, but with the drawers on the bottom, and the one shelf on top, I knew it had potential for some type of toy closet!

So here's what I did:  I moved the top shelf (the original one) down a few inches so it was low enough to house books.  The shelves holding legos (and the two tiny drawers below it) was one solid piece that I also found on Craigslist.  I think it was meant to hang on the wall or something! So I screwed these together, and used a lot of wood glue too.  Then I used particle board and wooden shelf brackets from Goodwill to construct the side with the baskets.  Pretty cute, huh?!

Then of course I went through the task of painting, sanding, glazing, and sealing.  For this piece I thought it would be fun to paint the inside a different color than the outside.  I like it!  And the hardware on this is original!  Awesome!

I thought it would be fun to put cork on the inside of one of the doors.  This was tricky!  I first tried using an all-purpose adhesive, but the cork kept curling away from the wood.  So I turned to my trusty glue gun.  I then pushed metallic thumb tacks around the cork to hide the raw edges.

On the other side I painted the door with chalkboard paint.  Simple!

And look!!! One of the small drawers worked perfectly to hold the chalk and eraser! YAY!

The large bottom drawers I used for puzzles, and toys for my 8 month old

And the BEST part about this for me (besides the fact that it only cost me about $50)......I can close the doors and hide everything inside!!