Discovering New Talents

Owning a house unveils one's many hidden talents! Talents like...planting flowers, fixing roof tiles, checking for termites, painting, attempting to decorate, replacing fence posts, and much much more. Ok, so maybe these aren't talents, more like items on a must-do-to-d0-list. One of our latest projects was finding the perfect piece of furniture for our kitchen. Our kitchen is tiny! We have about 5 useful cabinets and 3 drawers. One of these drawers and cabinets might possibly disappear one day when we decide to install a dishwasher. Did I mention we don't have a dishwasher? Our dishwasher's name is Forrest and he does an excellent job! After months and months of searching for a kitchen buffet, my parents found one at an estate sale for $75!!! What a deal and I couldn't believe it actually fit! We had restricting measurements due to the kitchen door, the pantry door, and the oven! They delivered our new piece of furniture and we loved it, except for the rusted hardware and honey-brown color.

I spent a good two months figuring out what exactly we should do, liking what I saw in a Pottery Barn catalog:



Our tile in the kitchen is black and white so we decided to paint the piece black. I looked into hiring someone to do it for us and we were quoted anywhere from $400-600!!! So I approached my dishwasher to see if he would be up for the project, and he was! I bought all the materials (or what I thought we needed after researching on google) and Forrest started taking off the old hardware, sanding, priming, and painting. It took a total of 4 days due to the humidity and rain. I still haven't found new hardware, but here are some pictures of Forrest's new unveiled talent, we love how it turned out!

Sanding

Time to Prime!

Almost finished product! Still need to find the hardware, which is why the drawers and cabinets look open -- we don't want them to get stuck!

If you're interested in doing a project like this, call me! We did run into some problems...the old screws were stripped so we had to drill into them to get the hardware off. At first we also didn't realize how important the priming stage is, another trip to the store. Also, I think either because of the coats of paint or the humidity, we had difficulty fitting the drawers and cabinets back into place. All in all, a fun learning experience. Forrest might have a different opinion!