Marrying Together Mismatched Furniture: The Buffet & Hutch Story

 I have a buffet. It was a gift from the Mr. for my birthday several years ago - and it was second hand. Does he know how to make me happy, or what??

 There it is back there, in our old house.

Back in the day, I painted it black. Loved it. I paired it with a large mirror hung vertically & two buffet lamps. It looked so very Pottery Barn-ish.

My tastes have changed a bit. No more buffet lamps. Too ornate. Sold them on craigslist for a little more than what I bought them for several years ago. No more mirror. It's in storage. I may or may not keep it. No more black. I'm all about painting EVERYTHING white. Well, a few things will end up aqua, but mostly white.

So I scraped the black paint off of the top of the buffet. Fortunately my previous paint job was pretty poorly executed and it came right off! A little sanding, a little cleaning, then I stained & sealed the top piece. I think it looks pretty good! I've never stained anything before. It always scared me. Not anymore!

I also primed & painted the rest of the buffet. I used leftover paint from the trim in our house. Since I'm not the best at painting, I decided that a nice distressed finish would be just the thing for covering up my mistakes. Something always peels when I paint furniture. A corner here, a leg there - but if it's distressed, it all blends in and looks intentional!

So after about 3 coats of paint, I fired up the palm sander & went to town on the corners & raised parts. Then a couple of coats of non-yellowing sealer. I love how it turned out!

I have decided that I want a place to display my china and the cherished china my Aunt Jean gave me (I'll save that story for another post). So I started looking for a hutch to put on top of my buffet (thus the reason for not using the mirror). I blogged a little bit about it here.

Free hutch. Can't beat it. So this is what it looked like before I painted it. No wonder someone gave it away. Gross.

And this is what it looks like after. Nice!

You'll notice, though, that it's not completely painted on the inside and the light at the top is still covered in newspaper. Silly me, I closed the door after the paint was dried. It was dried & cured. Really. But the hutch sat in a corner of our living room for a long time. Summer came, with all of it's humidity. Wood expands.

 This is the embarrassing corner of the living room that never made it into
photos until now. Thankfully it doesn't look like this anymore!

SO....I can't get the door open. I don't know if it will ever open. It's wedged so tightly that I can't get a razor blade in between. I was hoping that once it was in place it would acclimate to the air conditioning & open again. That hasn't happened. Last resort will be to remove the back of the piece and work at it from that angle. I'm having a similar issue with the buffet.

The doors won't close. It was in a non-climate controlled place for three years, poor warped baby. I may need to do some tricky carpentry work on them. For now, picture it complete.

Look for new artwork on that blank wall next week...

The hutch with a pale aqua backing, glass in the shelves and white china displayed. It will be just what I imagined it to be. Or...still imagine it to be.

But for now it's in place, and that alone makes me happy.
I can fill it with stuff later.
Baby steps.