Turning a dull TV cabinet into something acid green...

There are some real wonders in the depths of my mum's shed.

Not only did I pick up a crappy Ikea coffee table - which now features a map of the world on it (see previous post here) - but I also managed to get my hands on an old, dirty, manky TV cabinet.

Old, grotty and home to hundreds of spider corpses.

I remember this TV cabinet from when I was a kid. It sat proudly in our living room and housed the VCR player (remember them?! God, I feel old).

My mum bought it in the early 1980s... and it cost her about £300. Such were the days before flat-packs, eh?

In 2001, we moved house and my mum realised this old TV cabinet was a bit old-fashioned - so, like  everything else, it was dumped in the shed. (Despite the amount she paid for it 20 years earlier.)

And that's where it stayed... until I decided to wipe all the dead spiders from it and take it home.

First of all, I had to take the front panel off. Years of neglect had made it fall out of shape and as such it wouldn't shut. This wasn't an easy job because the screws had rusted and WD-40 didn't ease the pain.

Then I started sanding away, all the while dreaming of what exactly I was going to do with it.

I couldn't get "bright green" out of my head.

So off I went to Homebase, where the colour was specially mixed for me by the lovely staff there (I have to call them lovely because they've patiently mixed so many colours for me over time).

I decided to do this in eggshell instead of gloss because I didn't want it too shiny.

(TIP! I find eggshell paint less over-powering than gloss and therefore you're less likely to get a paint-induced headache.)

Eventually I got it looking like this...

I didn't want to paint it all green because I wanted to add another dimension to it, so I got out the masking tape - and meticulously painted black and white stripes. This took a very long time - I had to do it over three days because there was no way I was risking the black and white paint blending into one another.

I know it's a bit risky, but I used emulsion for this. I didn't want to buy a big tin of gloss or eggshell for the stripes so instead I bought two tester pots of emulsion paint.

To my surprise, it turned out fine. After the paint had completely dried, I covered it with extra-tough varnish (my new best friend).

And the final result was this...

Ta da!

It's a big, heavy thing but I managed to get it dragged into my front room, where I excitedly plonked the TV on it:

I love this TV cabinet - it's totally my sort of style and it grabs attention. When you walk into my house now, it's the first thing you see:

Would love to hear people's thoughts on it! I'm thinking of doing some more stripey furniture but it takes a very long time so it'd be worth knowing if it's worth it!