the hutch

Today, I present some before/after fun. In order to make a short story long, I will start at the beginning.

I think it started when I began working at Anthropologie. I fell in love with the inspiration. The way that it felt like home with such an eclectic feel. The art, the found items collected from around the world, the colors, the smells. I started picking piece by piece things that I loved and wanted to incorporate into my home.

Two words. China. Hutch. Something light, something open, perfectly placed in the corner of the kitchen displaying a ton of little goodies. Something eclectic yet homey. I was out shopping one weekend with some fellow thrifters and found this treasure.

I immediately fell in love with the bones of this piece. The size of it was nothing short of perfection.

After some wheeling and dealing, I got the piece down 25 bucks and we loaded 'er up. Blake was pleasantly surprised with my find. We immediately started brainstorming - with a gazillion ideas to attempt - which would work??

We started by removing the 2 doors.

Before.

After.

After making the executive decision to remove one shelf, we (read Blake) built wine glass holders to line the bottom of the first shelf. They are perfect and I love them. They hold all of the special gifts we received from friends for gettin' hitched!

For painting purposes we decided to add a touch of molding to the opening of the hutch.

In progress. Using clamps to hold while the wood glue dried over night. Look at Blake, so cute - even as a blur...

From there, we spent an entire weekend, I'm talking sun up to sun down out on the front porch, sanding and painting, and painting and painting.

After about 48 hours of constant sweat from the Texas sun - we got to bring our baby inside. As the proud little parents we are, we starting filling our hutch with previously mentioned goodies.

It was so fun to design and build this hutch exactly as we wanted. We incorporated wine glass holders - because, we Johnsons (mostly me - guilty) love a decent bottle of wine.

We also wanted a little nook for our coffee maker. Our personal coffee bar, outfitted with coffee grinds tin, stack-o-mugs, and one sugar packet holder sponsored by my mom from Crate and Barrel outlet.

As for the color selection, we opted for a light gray (remember - going for a light and airy Anthropologie feel) with dark gray for the molding piece and a seafoam green for the shelf and wine glass holders. What a crazy color scheme, a little out of my element, but still so fun to work with! And, it's the kitchen - make it fun!

Upgraded knobs. And can you tell, we moved the location of the knobs? It was so dang hard to pull those doors open as they had it. Upgrade!

One last touch - the side panels. Previously glass, now chicken wire. I love how it adds that touch of country to our fresh new piece.

I am just loving how it turned out. I love that I can display my china and favorite cookbooks. I mixed in touches of brown ( in baskets and trays and bowls ) to fulfill the whole eclectic criterion. Here she is again, one more for the road... or two...