The entire cabinet was primed with several coats of white, it was crazy how much the old wood veneer soaked up the paint like a sponge. 3 coats later, the surface was finally ready to apply the final coat. Choose the colours you like. Nicole has a turquoise vintage theme going on in her home so decided to bespoke a cabinet to compliment this look.
Create a quirky piece of furniture by painting it in colours you love and add some hardware that is totally different. i.e. a spoon handle,funky feet or even a leather belt handle like this one.
The legs were in decent enough condition so Nicole opted to leave them wood if they ended up having similar wood tones as the door once the old stain was removed. The door was an issue, she removed the handle, but sadly a big chunk of the wood veneer came off with it, because it was screwed on as well as glued with some kind of super glue! At this point she thought for sure there was no way we could salvage the wood door. There was a big hole that needed to be filled and obviously it wasn’t going to match the original veneer, so decided to cover it by using a leather pull handle.
With an old leather belt from the op shop and some brass screws this is how she made it.
Leather Furniture Pull Tutorial
Supplies:
– An old leather belt ( you can use leather belts from an op shop )
– Utility knife
– Screw driver
– Power drill with appropriate sized drill bits
– Chicago bolt with matching screw of choice
Chicago bolts come in various sizes and lengths, so you’ll want to measure the thickness of your drawer/door
before making your purchase.
With your utility knife cut the length of leather to suit your door/drawer. You’ll want to play around with folding it before making the final cut. Follow these steps.
Fold your cut piece of leather and mark the center point, this is where you’ll make a hole using your power drill. You could also use a leather punch to make the hole.
Once you’ve drilled the hole through your leather, you can screw in the male end of your chicago bolt.
Now you’ll want to drill a second hole in your door/drawer, this will hold the female piece of the chicago bolt and should be a tight fit, it’s larger than the screw, so make sure to use the appropriate sized drill bit. Once the hole is drilled, push the bolt into place. It should look like the image below:
All that’s left to do is screw your leather piece into the snuggly fit bolt and you’re all set.
Once the door was coated with tung oil and the drawer pull was attached, it all came together. We kept the legs wood even though they were lighter, it picks up the lighter tones in the grain on the door and it’s a nice contrast to all the white.
