The Hutch Gets a Makeover

I took a teeny break from the library to do something fun, that I’ve been putting off until I cleaned up the house, and thanks to a visit from the in-laws I can check that baby off the list! If you don’t remember this hutch, well, that’s OK, because you’re probably a new reader, or you don’t remember a post I made, oh, maybe two years ago or so?

Well, here it is again (with a little helper). It went into hiding for a while in the other house since we couldn’t find a wall space to place it… it seems like a strange thing to complain about, but there were a few too many windows there. So down into the basement it went.

Originally I though I would use it to store my yarn, but I don’t think that’s going to work right now either, given that my little “knitting area” has been moved to the third floor, and with it’s sloped ceilings and narrow staircase I’m not sure there’s a spot for the hutch OR that we could get it up the stairs. But, not to worry! We have a lovely little balcony that overlooks the water and is the perfect spot for a little night cap and some lovely conversation after the kids are tucked into bed. And this little hutch has a perfect little place right beside the door, where I’m planning on storing some blankets and maybe a few wine glasses or a bottle or two. Well, at least the blankets.

I also couldn’t figure out how I wanted to paint it. Then I saw this ::

Unfortunately, I have a link for the image, but I can not find the owner of the blog or the pic, so if you know whose work this is, please let me know so I can properly attribute the photo.

Edited to Add :: { Thanks to an exhaustive search, I finally found out that this hutch is the work of Molly Susan Strong, a talented woman who refinishes furniture. She’s taken a break from blogging right now, but I’m hoping that by leaving her some comment love that maybe she’ll get back at it again! I think her work is beautiful! You can click here or on the image above to get the the post where she talks about the work she did on this piece.

I spent a few days trying to find this image; I had a suspicion that I had seen it on another site, so I wrote to Miss Mustard Seed to ask her if the image was hers and she suggested that I may have seen it on her one of her Furniture Feature Friday posts. She was right. But did you know that you can actually search for an image using Google? If you drag the image into Google’s search box, it will find it for you. Thanks to Eeyore for the tip! It would’ve saved me a number of hours of searching, so I’ll count the time I spent as an investment in karma! }

Anyway, this hutch made my heart sing! I’m not always super crazy about the chippy/distressed look, some of it is great and some of it doesn’t really work for me, but somehow this one hit just the right note. So, how to accomplish it?

I had been hearing some chatter on several blogs about Annie Sloan’s chalk paint, and after doing a bit more research, I decided it was time to try it out. Right as we signed the paperwork on the house I ordered my first can… followed quickly by another order for five more cans and some wax. I hadn’t tried it, but I came up with several pieces that I wanted to refinish, so I decided to bite the bullet and have it at the ready!

And then, well, we moved in, I started unpacking, the holidays showed up, everyone got sick in January… you know, life got in the way. So it was only today that I finally got around to cracking open my first can and giving it a try.

I’m working on it.

I should be working on it right now too, but instead, I wrote a post about it.

A post about the work I should be doing.

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