The Medicine Cabinet

I got the medicine cabinet all stripped. It was pretty straight forward because it was shellacked originally and then had just 2 coats of paint on it. Really, it was more like only 1 coat of paint because the top coat was practically already off. I’d never seen anything quite like this. The paint was lifting off in sheets even before I hit it with the heat gun.

I think it had something to do with the fact that it was a 100 year old medicine cabinet in a flea-bag hotel. When someone went and did the every-50-year-paint-job-whether-it-needs-it-or-not they didn’t bother to clean or sand or anything, they just slapped more paint on right over all the grunge and filth that one would expect to find on medicine cabinet in a turn of the century hotel turned flea bag hotel. Here’s what I started with….



I would say it took me about an hour to get to this….



The hinges and the little catch for the door were boiled for about 20 minutes and they came out looking like this….



The only other thing to do besides picking a paint color is to fix a crack in the panel that supports the back of the mirror. It’s shouldn’t be too much work to putty it and sand it. After the crack repair I just need to paint and reassemble and that baby will be done.

Oh, and here’s a gratuitous cat shot of Mortimer waiting to attack me at the top of the stairs. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: He’s a vicious, mean spirited little cat.