Boys Toy Storage Cabinet

A while back I got this cabinet from someone who was trashing it.  It was a bit beat up and pretty rough so at first I wasn't sure if I was going to reuse it or just strip the wood off to reuse.

We needed some more storage for our boys toys as we are about to have our third child, a girl!  We are going to be putting our boys in the same room and redoing the third room for baby Karis so it was time to make room.  I thought this cabinet would do the trick and so began the redo.

First I wanted to ad a base to this as it looked like it lacked something:

I made a simple 2x4 base on the bottom and then added some old crown that I had saved from the dumpster.

I wire-brushed and sanded the rough spots all over to clean it up then gave it a light spray with a paint close to the original color.  I didn't want to loose the old look, just freshen it up.  After the paint I added a spray poly to give it a finished look.

The inside of the cabinet and the shelves were cleaned and then sprayed with polyurethane.

The finishing touches:

We wanted to make it fun for the boys so we added a bit of decor to the outside.  We were leaning toward adding some antique toy signs but went with an old car  theme.  We looked all over for original signage but couldn't find any and ended up buying a few signs from Hobby Lobby for 50% off.

I found an old car handle and old tractor light at an antique store to add to it.  The handle just had to be shined up but the light was a bit more work.

I had to sand it, spray paint it, and add all new guts.  I still need to change the bulb out to a better one and adjust the location of the bulb but for now it works.

The before and after: