Ugly Filing Cabinet

I'm moving into a new classroom this coming school year and I am starting to get things ready.  Since I haven't had a room of my own for the last three years, I am rather excited about this!  One of the things that I found was missing from my new room was a filing cabinet.  It sounds like a silly thing, but I need a filing cabinet.  Long story short, I was "gifted" a filing cabinet by the Administrative Assistant in our Middle School.  As he said, "It's kind of old.  But, it works."  It works?  I guess that means it has all of its drawers and they open and close.  He arranged to have it moved to my classroom.

I didn't think to take pictures of it when I finally laid eyes on it.  Ugly.  Seriously ugly, but in great shape.  It works was an accurate description.  It was an Army fatigue green similar to this:

I was jokingly told that this cabinet was so ugly that I was not allowed to have it in my room.  So, I promised to make it pretty.

I convinced my DH to help me load it into his truck and bring it home for "renovations."  I had decided that I could paint it and add some Washi Tape and that would spruce it up.
I started by giving that crusty old filing cabinet a solid wash down with the hose and some dish soap.  I have no idea where this cabinet was prior to me taking custody of it, but it was definitely somewhere with spiders.  Then, I took all the drawers out and popped all of the hardware off.  This was surprising easy but time consuming.  I tried to keep each drawer's hardware together and in order without luck.  Next step, an all over sanding with fine grit sandpaper stolen from Paul's workbench area in the basement.  After a good wipe down, I was ready to paint the cabinet!

I had chosen to paint the cabinet with Rust-oleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover 2x Matte Spray in Flat Black purchased from Home Depot.  I hate shiny filing cabinets so a matte finish seemed like the right choice.  I also decided that a protective cover made sense (more on this later) so I also purchased Rust-oleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover 2x Clear Spray in Matte Clear.  Two coats of black paint covered everything very nicely.  Following all of the directions, I coated the cabinet with the matte clear spray and called it a night, leaving the cabinet outside to dry.

When I woke up in the morning, I went outside to check out my handiwork to find that the clear spray had not quite done what I thought it would do.  The spray, instead of drying clear with a matte finish, had dried in what looked like white crystals all over the cabinet.

I tried wiping it off without luck.  A quick Google search turned up the result that maybe it was the humidity, but it wasn't a problem unique to me.  I re-sanded, and then reapplied the black paint.  Another overnight wait and the cabinet was finally ready to decorate.

I went to Michael's to pick out my Washi Tape.  I couldn't find tape that I liked that was thick enough for what I wanted to do, so I ended up buying two different kinds of Washi Tape in two different thicnknesses.

Washi Tape used for accent color

Washi Tape used for the large portion of the designs

I decided to make each drawer a different color.  I'm not really certain why I choose to do that, but I am super happy with the results.  Here are the drawers before I put the hardware back on.

I put all the hardware back on and then reassembled the drawers.  Needless to say, my sleeping sons were not very happy about my use of power tools early on a Saturday morning.  Once I got that together, I decided that the sides of the cabinet also needed some color.  And finally, the finished cabinet!

Side view