1/7/2009 - Auction Find - Corner Cupboard Project - Pocono Primitives

1/7/2009 - Auction Find - Corner Cupboard Project

The intent of this little story is to perhaps inspire someone to recognize the potential in even the roughest of pieces.

Someone brought us a corner cupboard last week that they purchased for not a lot of money at a local auction. They asked us to see what we could do to spruce it up a bit without putting a lot of time or money into it. Unfortunately I didn't take a "before" picture but it was pretty rough, the base section had been cut off at the bottom (apparently to remove some rot - the doors were just about at floor level) and it looks like the top had had at least one section of shelves cut off the bottom (probably due to rot also - I am guessing the two pieces had been left on a damp floor or in a barn with a dirt floor or something similar and they both rotted). The top also had no molding and was missing a piece of facia board. The following picture is a picture of the cupboard after repairs and repainting.

This next picture is one I "Photo Shopped" to give you an idea what the original cupboard looked like - although the original looked much worse - it was a very dirty white and had several other problems - lots of spaces in the front facia boards and some broken areas. As received, the fact that it was very short jumped out at you - so giving it some height was going to be an important part of any make over.

I fixed all the cosmetic issues then proceeded to add the base molding to give the piece some height. I typically use a 4" foot on corner cupboards I build but I went with a 5-1/2" tall foot molding to give some additional height. The foot molding was made using 5/4 stock (1-1/4" thick) and incorporated a standard ogee pattern to add a little detail. If you ever have occasion to add a molding to this style of corner cupboard with the beveled facia boards, the angle of the molding (where you join the molding together) on this style cupboard is almost always 22.5 degrees. The next picture is a closeup of the ogee detail and the 22.5 degree joint.

I then added the top molding which included a piece of 5/4 stock as the cornice board to add some additional height and a simple cove molding to provide a simple detail in keeping with the original design of the cupboard. It was then off to Donna's paint shop where she completed the make over by adding gray over gray distressed paint with an antique white interior. The following images show closeups of the cornice and molding.

This was a fairly old cupboard and worth saving - the following image shows the square nails on the back boards and if you look closely you can see that they were hand planed.

Additional views of the finished cupboard.

So . . . for an investment of a couple evenings of work, a not very functional piece was transformed to something useful and perhaps it will be around for another 100+ years.

dh