Condo Blues: Filing Cabinet Handle Revamp

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Filing Cabinet Handle Revamp

I got a filing cabinet has a gift to hold all of the papers and whatnots that goes with being a responsible adult. It’s made of flimsy thin metal. I’m sure it was a Wally World (ugh!) special because shortly after we got it the plastic drawer pull snapped off in my hand when I tried to use it to open the drawer.

I looked for a replacement handles at Lowes but I couldn’t find anything that would fit the screw holes that were already drilled in the cabinet drawer front. Husband and I both remarked that we should just go to Staples and get a more substantial filing cabinet and send the cheap-o cabinet to that great metal recycling bin in the sky. OK, not really a recycling bin in the sky, more like the recycling dumpster outside of the fire station around the corner but you get my drift. I was trying to be poetic about refuse.

I was poking around the Habitat Restore and found some hideous brass 1970’s drawer pulls. The only redeeming quality was that these drawer pulls had a back plate that would cover the old screw holes in the drawer front if I needed to drill new ones to install the new handle. Oh, that and the handles were cheap. At fifty cents for the pair I figured that I could do something with them to deuglyfy them and have a more useful filing cabinet once again.

I painted the drawer pulls and back plate with some leftover silver spray paint. Once the silver paint was dry, I painted the interior of the back plate with black paint for interest and to de-70’s the look at bit.

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I drilled new holes in the cabinet and install the new drawer pulls. I didn’t have to worry about filling the holes for the old cabinet hardware because they are covered by the boun-chicka-boun-boun 1970’s back plate.

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Revamped filing cabinet handles or sneaky hole camouflage, you be the judge. What do you think?

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7 comments :

Amie Hartman said...

Looks great! I'm always thinking bad things about my own ugly filing cabinet :)

Dorothy said...

Great idea. Way to go from wally-world to oh-so-chic.

Rebecca said...

I like the retro handles! I believe we had similar ones in my house growing up. Of course, they were not silver and black, which really adds a touch of class.

Thanks for this Thrifty Green Thursday tip!

RecycleCindy said...

Love the project and your cabinet looks so cool with those retro handles.

Jo Hoffacker said...

Great idea!

Joy said...

I have to tell you that your retro handles look incredibly chic! It makes your cabinet look quite classy and more like a Pottery Barn purchase than a refitted Wally World gift. Well done! Thanks for joining us this week for Thrifty Green Thursday!

Amanda on Maui said...

They're very goth. They look like casket handles. LOL I like 'em.

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