A Touch of Gray

I finally finished my "big" project! During the last week of January I found this little number at a local antique store.

(this picture was taken with my camera phone at the store, so that explains the low quality & the junk all around)

Now, I have wanted a china cabinet since Cory and I received our first china plate. We have been keeping our nice plates in a cabinet in our living room along with our nice silverware. It's kind of annoying and strange when we have people over and I need another plate and go to the living room to get it. It's not that bad, but I really wanted a place in the kitchen to keep our plates AND have a way to display them since we don't eat on them that often.

When I first saw this piece I saw such potential. Plus it was on sale for 75% off. It was only $125, which is pretty cheap compared to other furniture in the store. I guess because this "antique" isn't really that old. It looks like it's from the 80's maybe late 70's...Not that old in my book.

If you know what Cory and I drive, you may be wondering how we got this big thing home. Well, fortunately for me, it was two separate pieces, so we could fit one piece in each of our cars. Here are the pieces separated at home. I'm glad that it can be broken down because I can see us one day (when we get a nicer china cabinet) using this bottom piece as a dresser.
And I could see this top piece with legs added and used as possibly a towel cabinet in a large enough bathroom....maybe.

I really wanted to paint the cabinet white and distress it at first. I also wanted to take the glass panes out and put in chicken wire to give the cabinet a French Country look. I soon found out that chicken wire is about $20 for a HUGE roll that I would barely use a fraction of. I quickly vetoed that idea. I think it would be nice to use chicken wire one day if I did the towel cabinet idea or if I used the whole cabinet in a craft room (in my dreams).

Anyway, I finally decided to paint the cabinet a light gray on the outside and on the inside, a light blue. But first I had to take all the doors off, take the old ugly hardware off, fill in the holes from the old handles, sand the thing, and prime it. Painting didn't take that long. The part that was really holding me up was finding new hardware. I mistakenly dreamed up my own hardware apparently because I could not find anything that I had in mind at Home Depot or Lowes. I was really hesitant on ordering pulls online because I wanted to see it in real life. Well, after a week and a half I ended up ordering some drawer pulls and some handles for the doors. When they came in though, they didn't match each other. I had to decide on one of the items and then match it to some more hardware. I found something that could work, and although it wasn't my first choice, I'm happy with it. Here is the completed china cabinet.
Complete with a light :)
A close up of my drawer pull. I really like it. It's in an antique pewter finish. In the big picture the hardware looks black.
And here is the cabinet with my dishes. I'm still playing around with the placement of them, but this is how it looks for now.
I'm so happy to have this project completed. It's nice to see my dishes and to have two extra drawers in my kitchen. (We only had ONE drawer) Putting all my plates in the cabinet made me realize I need to have a dinner party. We have tons of plates. I had to put most of them in the bottom cabinet where they can't be seen.

I hope everyone has a great week and happy President's Day :)