A bit more about my Kastoor - Stacey's craft & designs

I’ve already made a post about my new work spot in the house (as my sewing room turned into our little boy’s room). But as I since added woodworking and furniture projects to my website I’d like to elaborate some more about what I did to create this work area and fold out office.

Years back I’ve bought this second hand antique oak linen closet. It was already painted white, not very neat but it was adequate for storage in my sewing room. When I decided to turn this closet in to an office space, renovation was in order. As most of the wood was nice oak and still in good order my partner and I decided we prefer the oak look for our living room.
We did not have the time, space and tools to do a full blown restoration (and I honestly don’t think the cupboard is worth it). To make the the parts that where in bad shape look great we used methods that worked for us but are not very conventional here and there I’d say.

For instance the side panels where totally perforated by wood worms. After mulling over numerous options to fix or hide the destructions we decided to stain thin plywood into a darker colour (Osmo decor wax Ebony). These I glued on top of the old panels and they make it look ever so fancy (even if I say so myself). The knobs of the drawer were missing, so I’ve stained simple pine wood knobs in the same dark colour as the side panels to complete the look.

side view of the stained panels
new drawer knob

One of the back legs was partly eaten away by woodworms. So I’ve sawed away the damaged piece of leg and attached a new piece of oak with a lap joint. It’s been years since I took a piece of rough oak and made it to size by hand with a plane and chisels, but I can still do it! YAY! Eventually a bit of coloured wood wax made the new oak on the leg the same colour as the existing leg.

unfinished side of the closet, plus the fixed leg at the back

Besides storing my sewing equipment, I also wanted the cupboard to have a workspace I could use for my sewing machine. So I thought out this fold down tabletop which is situated on the inside of the left door. It is held up by a rotatable wooden hook I made myself from a piece of raw oak which I stained with coloured wood wax to match the original oak door. The inside of the doors and the tables are made of plywood and stained dark (with Osmo decor wax Ebony) to make them all look more fancy.

rotatable wooden hook (closed)
rotatable wooden hook (open)
sewing workspace
fold down tabletop

The last useful feature I’d like to point out is the slide out (laptop) workspace, made with plywood stained dark like the fold down table. We fixed the slide out workspace with drawer gliders to a piece of spruce beam to create space left and right so the workspace has enough room to slide out.