Painted Lady

It seemed wrong to talk about the hutch behind its back. She came to us a hippy horror, wood knobs and all... but free. Yes. Nothing sweeter, and solid, thick, heavy deliciousness that comes with scoring an outdated but quality piece. Her glass was murky greenish-brown, glazed with some kind of awful thick stuff.




















Sand paper, primer, 1 whole gallon of paint (it needed 2) and she was lookin’ pretty good. I couldn’t replace the hinges so we got new knobs to match. She was close, so close. I couldn’t figure out what to do about that u-g-l-y glass. Replacing it would be spendy, but I considered punching a design through thin metal or fabric. When I went to clean the paint off the glass, miracle upon miracle—the glass came clean! Beautiful, clear retro colored glass was hidden by half a century of grime. Really a magical moment. So here’s our painted lady. We’ll be sad to see her go (but love to watch her leave. teehee) Moral of the story? Paint is good, really good.

Dining Desk

We don’t have an office, and won’t anytime soon. My dining room looks like this:

I might be exaggerating a little.

We’re selling our hutch. Though it’s come a long way and we’ve grown to love it, it is completely impractical for our needs. What we need is a desk, that lives in our dining room and doesn’t look like a desk.

Sideboard for dining room, to double as office space. Apothecary inspired?

So the idea is that the side would have a desktop hinged, comes up, dining chair slides underneath and you have an instant desk. Office things are stored in the “sideboard” out of site. Also, maybe one of the drawers is a filing cabinet? And there are drawers at the top for storing table cloths and such. I can keep my polish pottery collection on top (2 pieces is collection right? Well it’s a start) Or on some floating shelves above, maybe real rustic reclaimed looking ones… Okay I’m getting carried away.

So the inside looks a little something like this:







These top drawers are for linens, left is filing cabinet, middle is baskets for office supplies, right is laptop shelves.

Options for the front include apothecary:












OR, and now that I look at it I’m leaning more this way, something a little more modern:















OR we could always go somewhere a little more whimsical like so:

















Well the plan is a little schizophrenic, but I can't build till after we move next month so there is still some time.