I’ve had a fairly standard four drawer table shaped filing cabinet for years. When I lived in Ohio I painted it a swirly blue and packed it full of important paper work. When we lived in SF it sat in the back of the garage and held old computers, but when we moved to Purgatory I decided I wanted to use it for filing stuff again.
It was a tad rusty and the paint was looking pretty sad. So I decided to give it a face lift.
I painted it before with tempera/water based paints and after sanding away much of the rust and using some naval jelly on the rest, I set up about giving it a new look. I decided to go with reddish look this time as my office is predominantly warm colors on the floors. The top had contact paper (fake marble look) on it and I simply recovered that with a fresh layer.
Here’s a pic of it as it now sits in my office. It’s now full of warranties, computer/appliance manuals paper of the printer and lots of spare hanging folders. Thy for some reason loves to tap on it with his beak.