China Cabinet Project

In my dining room is a large china cabinet (thanks, Aunt Beth).  When my wife still lived here, it had an antique set of china in it that she had gotten from her mother.  When she left, one of the things she took was the china.

So for a while now, I've had this big empty china cabinet sitting in my dining room.

It had some crap in it, as you can see.  I was talking to my mother one day, and she suggested using it to showcase some of my pictures.  I originally didn't plan on using it for that.  But the idea floated around in my head for awhile, until I decided to give it a try.

There were two problems.  I wanted to light the photos inside the cabinet, but first, there were no outlets on the wall near the cabinet.  Secondly, I didn't want to drill a hole anywhere in the cabinet for a power cord.  I figured maybe I could find some clearance leftover battery-operated christmas lights.

I didn't find any.  Not just battery-operated ones, but no christmas lights at all.  But, at Lowe's, I saw an under-cabinet battery-operated LED lamp.  It was twelve bucks, and I would need at least twelve of them.  Yikes.  So I decided to move on.  Maybe I'd be able to do it sometime in the future.

I headed to Big Lots to look for a new area rug for the living room.  The one that was there was pretty ratty.  While at Big Lots, I saw these 3-packs of battery-operated LED bars.  They were cheap.  I bought four of them.  I went to Walgreens and got a bunch of 5x7's printed up (I had a coupon for them, too), and got lucky with frames at the Dollar Store.

Back at home, I organized everything.

Yeah.  The LED bars were silver.  Yikes.  But, at the dollar store I also found little cans of brown Krylon spray paints that were 3/1.00.  Perfect.  You can also see the batteries I got from BJ's for the LEDs.

First, I had to open up all the packages of LEDs.  Yup, they were still silver.  So I grabbed some masking tape and went to work taping off the lights.

You can also see the mechanism for opening the package.  Always use the right tool for the job.  If you don't have the right tool, use a tool that's complete overkill.  Like a diagonal cutter.  I took the lights outside and got to work readying them for painting.

After applying the first coat of paint, I went inside to start organizing and framing the pictures.  I did all the black-framed ones first, then went out a put on a quick second coat.  After that, I went back in and finished off the red frames.

Once everything was framed up, I headed out to check on the paint.  It was completely dry.  Well, dry enough to start mounting them in the cabinet.  

Yup.  Brown.  And all batteried up.  Getting the backs off was a complete pain, but I got it.  Those little dials on the side of the lamps let you tilt the light.  Perfect for this!  I used the adhesive velcro to mount them in the cabinet.  Then put in the pictures.  And rearranged them.  And rearranged them again.  And again.  Once I was done, I was pretty happy with the outcome.

All in all, it ended up being a pretty cool project, and it looks pretty damn awesome all lit up.  The lamps have two brightness settings, not that I'll use anything other than the brightest setting.

Anyway, I feel pretty damn good about it.  I didn't have to drill any holes or move any massive cabinets.  I got lucky with prices and finding ton of stuff at the dollar store.  Came out pretty well.

Oh, and I did get a new rug.  The dog has already covered it in hair.  Sometimes, I'd like to cover him in napalm.