When we first moved to our house, there was a large wood workbench on the back porch, salvaged from an old workshop. Since it had been left out in the elements, many of the parts were warped and cracked. I disassembled the bench and reused the parts for projects around the house. One of those projects was a cat food cabinet made from two drawers and part of the workbench top. I turned the drawers sideways to make the sides of the cabinet, put on a top with back splash, and made a door with hinges. The wood I used for the door had a large split, which I reinforced with braces on the back and an old leather belt nailed to the front.


The problem with the wood top is that it was not smooth, so was hard to clean. To fix this, I added laminate adhesive tiles to the top, then gave the rest of the wood a boost with a rub down with Howard’s Feed-n-Wax.

It took a bit of time for the cats to figure out that the new surface was stable, and Thor would rather his wet food bowl be put elsewhere, but the surface is so much easier to clean now.