Oh man, we’ve been smashed with illness again. Alby spent all of last night throwing his guts up. Literally all night. It began at 11pm, and was pretty much half hourly until 5:30am. There are no clean single sheets in the house, he went through I don’t know how many pairs of pyjamas, and there is a mountain of pretty hideous washing to be done. Fortunately Clara slept through pretty much all of it. The little man is in bed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t resurface until lunch time. Fingers crossed it’s just a 24 hour bug. It’s funny how kids react to things. He hates chucking, but loves to brag about it afterwards. Kids are nuts.

Anyway, while they’re both having a snooze, I thought I’d put the finishing touches on the filing cabinet in the laundry/creative space. When I painted the shelves for the kitchen, I also gave the filing cabinet a bit of a roll. Nothing too challenging, I just unscrewed the handles, gave the whole thing a light sand with some 120 grit paper, then gave it a couple of coats of primer, then a topcoat of high gloss acrylic paint. I used a small foam roller, which doesn’t give a perfect finish, but is better than brush strokes. It’s a big improvement on the original, but still very boring.

I had originally planed to use a matte grey to add a pattern, but I clearly have commitment issues, because I just couldn’t see it through. Instead, I pulled out some of Alby’s acrylic paint, and mixed up some red, yellow and white until I ended up with a coral/salmon/watermelon colour (you know, the new cream/ivory/off-white/ecru. It’ll be the 2016 Pantone colour for sure!).

I also went down a different path for the pattern. Not knowing when the next spewnami of hydrolyte and dry toast was going to hit meant that time was of the essence, and there was no way I was going to be measuring anything. I’m pretty sure my accuracy is inversely proportional to my degree of sleep deprivation, so doing anything too mathematical would only lead to tears. Instead, I cracked out my faithful roll of masking tape and cut sick. I did both drawers at the same time, just to make sure there was some consistency, and was roughly aiming for flipped mirror image of the top for the bottom.

Once I was happy with the placement, I started applying the paint using one of Alby’s sponges. There’s nothing like hijacking your kid’s craft supplies to make your own stuff. Way more satisfying than colouring in. After I’d done a couple of shades of the watermelon, I got bored and decided to add some mint as well.

Once the tape came off, this is what I ended up with. Initially I had some painter’s remorse, but I think it’s growing on me! Once I’ve done some more tidying up in the laundry, I’ll have a better idea of how it looks. The beauty of using the acrylic paint is that if I decide to do a Finnegan, I can just give it a gentle rub with water and a scourer and the colour will come off – a win for fickle-ness!

I was going to replace the handles, but I think they are pretty unobtrusive as the are, so for the meantime, they’re staying.