Two More Random Projects

There's a couple of other random projects I've been working on. A year or two ago I went to Brimfield (a gigantic flea market that happens 3 times a year in Connecticut) and bought some things that I thought were pretty cool looking.

Item 1: an little old metal cabinet - probably used in a doctor's office. It had some rust & peeling paint and inoperable wheels on the bottom. I originally bought it as a sink stand for the vessel sink in the 1/2 bath downstairs - the dimensions were near perfect. But I decided that it was a little too unusual to cut up for the bathroom. So instead it became the tv stand for the mini tv from college. When we moved the big tv upstairs to make room for the bigger tv, I thought it was time to redo that piece.

Unfortunately, I don't have "before" pictures. But I did some sanding and spray painting, Jim took the locked up wheels off with his sawzall and replaced them with some new ones from Homer, and this is what it's looking like:

The plan is to put it back upstairs in the master bedroom, only it will now become the nightstand, and the chinzy little wooden piece purchased from an Ames (kinda like Kmart but was local to New England) going out of business sale will be trashed.

Item 2: the Dentist Lamp! This was a very odd piece, and I'm not really sure why I bought it. By the time Candice and I lugged it to the car seemingly a mile away, I REALLY didn't understand why I bought it! It actually works though, and it's kinda crazy looking. I thought it would make an unusual reading lamp. But it also was rusty and in need of cosmetic repair.

I've done some sanding on it. Most of it is fine; however, the base is seriously rusted. My 60-grit disks just weren't doing the job. So bought a couple of other stripper tools, and I'm going to try them. One is a 3M product on a course non-woven. When I was a summer intern, I actually worked on abrasive materials like this. I've got high hopes for it. But since I'm not sure if it will be too aggressive, I also bought a Black & Decker wire wheel. But my personal experience with most of the Black & Decker stuff is that they're pretty wimpy. Both of products attach to a drill chuck. Hopefully my rechargeable drill gun will work fine. Otherwise, I'll have to pull out one of Jim's monster drills.

So now that I've finished my homework, and I don't have class for another 4 hours (it's President's Day, so I'm off work), I'm going to go exercise a little bit and then see what I can do about the dentist's lamp!