Another Sewing Room Upcycle

I have mentioned in a few posts, that I was going to paint a couple of sets of drawers that LB discarded after her bedroom clear out and utilise them in my newly organised sewing room. I've already posted the results of the first upcycle, but the second one that I needed to do was a bit more time consuming.

The set of drawers in question were these:

OH has owned these drawers for many years and then passed them onto LB, to house her pens and pencils.  As she now no longer wanted them, it was my turn to use them and although they are very beautiful as they are, with cute Bakelite knobs, I decided to paint them inside and out, as there were lots of ink stains and writing inside the drawers and marks to the outside and top.

It was a bit of a longwinded faff to be honest, as I needed to prime all of the surfaces before painting them and with all the little sections within the drawers, this took an age. If it hadn't been for lockdown, I probably wouldn't have bothered at all, but having plenty of time to fill I proceeded.

Here's a picture I took part way through the priming process:

Eventually, I was able to get the coloured paint on.  I had two tester pots left over from previous paint searches, one of which I used for the outer sides of the drawers, and was the same colour I'd used on the drawer fronts of the other set of drawers. This colour was called Crochet, which seemed very fitting for a craft room. The second colour I used only on the insides of 3 drawers after I'd run out of the first colour.  This yellowish colour was called Tapestry Thread. Who knew?

Here's a picture of the finished drawers:

Anyway, there was just enough paint to give two coats to the outside of the drawers and just one coat to the insides, so to make them look a little better inside I decided  to use some pretty printed papers to line the different compartments. It took a while to cut them out and stick them in, but I think the results were worth it and were a much prettier solution.

During the painting process, the little Bakelite knobs did get a bit messed up with paint, but as the paint was water based, it soon came off with a bit of a rub with a rag and some surgical spirit.

Once painted, I returned my sewing items (both new and old, as I have a small collection of vintage sewing notions) to the drawers.  Here are a few pictures of what I've put inside:

And finally my vintage sewing tool collection which are mostly needle and pin cases.

The drawers have enabled me to beautifully segment and organise my items, making them easy to find when I need them. I'm pretty happy with the results. It was worth the 10 or more hours of effort and hopefully they will stay in use for many more years to come.