Trash to treasure (sort of)

I came upon an old storage cabinet when looking for something to repurpose into storage in my youngest's room. She eventually found a old desk with about 7 coats of paint on it, but that is a story for another time.

We pulled into the owner's driveway and the nice old lady who was selling it told me it was something her husband had built a long time ago. It wasn't in as good of a shape as the pictures made me believe, but the drawers were rock solid. I gave here the few bucks she wanted for it, and we threw it in the truck.

When I got it home, I couldn't decide what to do with it, whether just reinforce the original carcass, or rebuild everything around the drawers. the 1/2 inch ply sides and bottom were delaminating, so I decided to take them off and replace them with 3/4. The solid wood drawer frames and the drawers were in very good shape.

I stapled some fence pickets to the drawer frames to keep the spacing as I pulled the sides off. There were only about 7000 small nails holding this thing together. The drawers were not quite interchangeable, and I was hoping to get off easy and not have to do too much measuring.

I didn't change too much in his measurements, except to shorten the original overhang he had on the sides and front, which I thought looked kind of cool, and gave it a more stable base. I also turned the casters 90 degrees so they were in line with the long axis instead of the short axis.

The edge glued pine top is the remains from someone's discarded Ikea desk, and I think it will go well on this piece. For less than a sheet of plywood it turned into a very solid shop cart, or maybe a pen turning workstation. I may edge band the ply, but for now it's fine the way it is. I have one vote in the house to keep the colors as is, and another to paint the plywood in an earth tone chalk paint finish.