French Country Hutch

One of my latest furniture projects had a mind of its own…but what else is new?? I have been in love with this hutch (below) for months and months…in fact, I have it pinned to at least two different Pinterest boards!

I haunted Craigslist for days/weeks/months/(who knows) to find a similar piece for a good price, and finally came across this one:

It was $75!!  The only problem…it was in Kirkland, WA, while I was in Portland, OR, for spring break!  The owner was moving, and it HAD to leave on one specific day, and I wasn’t going to be available.  I fretted over that for a while, until an elegant solution occurred to me.  I was supposed to paint a small chest of drawers for a client that she was picking up IN Kirkland!  I made a deal…if she would pick up this hutch for me, I would paint her chest for free.

Everybody wins!

So the hutch came home in April, I think…and then it sat….and sat…and sat…until finally I was ready to do something with my dining room.

I tried my best to re-create the look of my inspiration picture.  I painted the body with a DIY chalk paint made from SW Creamy ceiling paint!  I distressed everything heavily, and also glazed it with a dark walnut stain .

I had a different vision for the backing other than beadboard, but I had to bring the hutch inside before I got to it in order to keep it “safe” from other garage projects. 
  I placed it against the dining room wall that was supposed to be it’s new home…and promptly hated it.

It was too. darn. big.

Sadly, I knew right then that it wasn’t staying.  I decided to use beadboard for the backing, painted a couple of shades darker than the rest of the hutch.

 
After putting it all together, I could appreciate that it was a pretty piece…just not for me!  It has moved on to a new home now.

<Sigh.>  Better luck next time!

Linking up here:

	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence
Knick of Time
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
	Mod Vintage Life

Replica Dry Sink @ Knick of Time

Today I am guest-posting for Angie at Knick of Time Interiors!  Hope you’ll visit me there to see the transformation of this:

to this!

Come visit at Knick of Time!

The cabinet at the top of the stairs

Really.

That's what we call it.

Maybe it doesn't have quite the ring that

"the cupboard under the stairs"

has, but it's gotta be close!

Anyway, I bought this little cabinet from a classified ad for $50 several years ago. In my head it was going to sit just inside our front door, but it was too big. Instead, it went to the landing at the top of the stairs, and there it has sat ever since!


And it was fine for a long time. It holds all my yarn stash, and other miscellany crafty items. It was a brown cabinet on a white wall, and it wasn't bothering anybody.

Then I had to go and paint the wall...a year ago. Now it was an ugly brown cabinet on a brown wall, and it bothered ME...a lot!!


If it bothered me so much, you might wonder why it took a year to paint it. Well, there were too many more-fun-more-interesting projects waiting in the garage. Then there was homeschool. Then there were the holidays.

But all that is OVER now....and the time had come.

Wednesday I bought paint and a dropcloth (which I used as a dropcloth) and got to work!

The poor little cabinet never moved from the top of the stairs. I just pulled it away from the wall and left the doors and drawers hanging open for a few days. It's OK. No one fell down the stairs in the middle of the night... (that I know of--I wear earplugs at night!)

I used Behr Premium paint in "Heavy Cream." In retrospect, and I needed something a little more creamy, but that's how the milk spilt! I used Minwax Dark Walnut stain to glaze it all over, and I replaced the hardware (except the hinges, although I would have if I could have gotten them off).

It definitely "pops" more against the brown wall now, and that's good.


The bad is that it isn't exactly the same "white" as the framed pictures above it.

And the pictures aren't going / can't go anywhere!

(These are my treasured hand-painted irises on porcelain tiles that my mother made. They are beyond gorgeous, but the frames may have to be re-re-painted to match the cabinet now!)


The color difference was really bothering me until I put a few doo-dads on the cabinet. That helps fool my eye into not noticing the difference quite so much!


I will admit this isn't my ideal piece of furniture for this spot--what I really want is an antique dresser that's up on legs. But I can live with it a while longer now!

What do you think? Better?