My Office Hutch ...

In my never-ending quest to get my office organized and looking purty (I am, after all, the only girl in the house... and this is the room where I can "do" purty, should I so feel inclined)... I set out to find an inexpensive hutch to put on top of our old golden knotty pine dresser. We recently ordered a beautiful king chest bed set in chocolate stained solid alder, so this old dresser was FREE to become my latest victim... err... project :)

I couldn't, unfortunately, find a solid wood hutch at any second hand store, so I found this laminate hideous being on clearance at Liquidation World for $20. A coat of primer and a few coats of ivory paint on both the hutch and the dresser, and voila!

The hideous hutch (notice the formed plywood chair off to the left.. I got 2 of them for $5.00 total at the Salvation Army! Can't wait to refinish them!)....

And the refinished set all loaded up in my office (yes, there's a couch in my office, not much choice there for the time being). I picked up the gorgeous glass knobs on ebay for a song and a prayer :)

These encyclopedias are my grandparents'... ca 1950. My mom (and myself in subsequent years) would spend hours reading through them... they're quite interesting.. and a nice deep teal colour, which makes me happy beyond belief :)

And I found those cool old glass electrical insulators for $1.00 a piece quite a while ago and thought they were mighty cool (they are, afterall, my colour! :)

I sure wish the pictures had better lighting, but it's 8 pm at night and artificial overhead lighting is only so good :)

Anyways, I am now in search of a new (old!) desk to redo for my office. I have this huge iMac and it's sitting on a dinky sofa table:) NOT comfortable on the back to lean over!!

Martha, pretty Martha....

So, I had this old dresser that's been hanging around our family for about 20 years.. it's a great little dresser, solid wood.. and after I moved into this most recent place, my mom let me have it (thanks mom!).... I was in a bit of a rush, so I painted it a distressed black. used wax as a finish and plopped it in my son's room. Well, turns out I learned two things with that. (a) my son needs more room.. he has over 45 pairs of jeans and over 80 shirts (it's a sick compulsion on my part, I get them all second hand or at least 70% off retail, lol). and (b) wax is a really crappy finish to put over paint. You could see the variations in sheen against the black really badly, no matter how much I buffed/polished.

Which leads me to Martha. I stripped her down of her dowdy black apparel, sanded, and used my brand new Campbell Hausfeld spray gun system (thanks to my wonderful hubby). I used a concoction of paints I mixed myself to end up with this beachy faded turquoise. This was a test in patience, because after the first coat of polyurethane (which said non-yellowing, by the way), I realized it was on too thick (didn't have the spray guide turned in the right direction), so I had to re-sand, re-paint, and re-polyurethane it. So here she is, in her new home in my dining room! I added a faint damask pattern to the drawers, added glass knobs and now she's ready to house all my son's homeschool papers and supplies! I <3 you, Martha. :) The only issue I have is that the so-called 'non-yellowing' polyurethane has yellowed in some areas.. and it bugs me, but I guess it kinda adds to her charm? LOL. Regardless, she brings character to our dining area.