A "New" China Cabinet For the Dining Room

After I re-purposed my old china cabinet into the living room as a bookcase, I was given another one by a friend about a year ago.  It was really big, and wasn't really my style; but I had another friend who was interested in trading her china cabinet for it.  It took us a while to coordinate the swap (she lives on the opposite side of town, and we're both pretty busy), but we finally did it last weekend.  The new cabinet is an Ikea LEKSVIK cabinet (discontinued):

The bottom half  is full of Sylvan's and my cookbooks; and the top houses some of my rock and mineral collection, which hasn't been on display for the past couple of years since I moved the other china cabinet.  Yay, rocks!

Top: shells in the back left corner; naturally-formed crystal points and clusters
Middle: carved spheres and points, a jar of tumbled stones, and a fluorite plate
Bottom: mostly fluorite, with a couple of decorated rocks from the garden

Somewhere I have a box full of fossils, and another box containing my sulfurs, chalcanthite, and a few other things; but I have NO idea what I've done with the boxes.  I'm so organized.  (x_x)



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Laura's Home For Wayward Furniture

Wow, I should totally just name this blog that. 

This armoire was given to me by a friend whom I helped move houses last weekend, as she no longer had a space for it.

Neat!   Tall.  Free.  Like.


Idk if you remember the craigslist dresser I refinished and put into my closet when I re-did it in 2012;  I had pulled it out and put it on this wall instead after a while, freeing up some floor space in the closet, and wall space on which to hang a scarf organizer last July.   I've moved it to the opposite side of the bathroom door in the bedroom (you can see the floorplan in the first closet link).  Show you when it doesn't have a pile of junk on top.  ;)

Anyway, this armoire is MUCH better on this wall than the dresser (and pile of blankets next to it in a plastic tub) was.

It needs a wee bit of work.   There's water damage on the top and on both sides, all  of which are thin plywood, and will need to be entirely replaced, one day.

It will also need to be refinished, due to some regular wear-n-tear (regular if you're a family of wampas (and no offense to Moving Friend, it was like this when she got it from Craigslist).

And also some places where the finish has just flat out peeled off.

The design up top is painted on, below the finish layers.  I guess this was supposed to be kind of art-deco-looking?

I can't tell where this thing came from or exactly how old it is.  It's solid oak and oak plywood, with iron locks. There's no maker's mark anywhere, inside or out.  Hm.

Until I get a chance to really put some work into this thing, though, it still makes a great blanket-holder.

You can see the line around the middle where it needs a shelf.

It could use an upper shelf, too.

The least I could do was slap some knobs on it for now, because, I shit you not, I cut my finger on a peeling piece of old, dried varnish at one point when I pried the door open by the edge.  O_O

That'll do, for the time being.  (And yes, they're level.  The picture is a really weird angle).


I'm hoping that I can find some keys for these keyholes, and maybe a keyhole cover for the door on the right in this pic (the lock is in there, but the cover is missing).
So pretty.




So what's the plan?  I have no idea.  Right now the plan is to keep blankets in it until I finish the other nine-million projects I've been doing lately and THEN worry about  

*

One of my "lines" (you know, those things you always say that your friends rib you about - like me painting things blue) is "Hm.  I could put a plant there."  That happened like six hours after I set up this armoire, lol.  So I did this:

P.S. - Don't even think I've forgotten about all those light fixtures I started in January.




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Spice, Spice, Baby*

BEHOLD (sounds better than "before", doesn't it?)

• one dirty-ass kitchen "backsplash" (it's just a wall) (so, I tried to "erase" the oil spatters on the paint with chalk the way I saw on Pinterest?  Now I have an oily, chalky mess. Thanks, Pinterest! FFFF)  
• one 3' length of steel L-shaped bracket thing, the proper name for which escapes me
• screws
• screwdriver
• level
• messy cabinets

VOILA!  

One practically-invisible mini-shelf on the backsplash for all of  my spices (don't worry, I have more - I just put out the ones I use all the time, the rest are in a basket in the cabinet with my extras).  You can't even see the steel bracket.  Which is good. Because it's ugly. But it's invisible, so, whatever.

SO

PRETTY


and it mostly hides the chalk/oil mess.

This is where I had the spices before, on three lousy Susans.  It was cramped, I could barely reach the top...

...and...

...the adjacent cabinet was a goddamned mess.

I have a trick back, and when it goes out (with no warning whatsoever, or any discernable cause, no less), I can NOT reach my lower cabinets, or lift even the lightest item.

Therefore, I have ALL of my regular-use kitchen stuff in my upper cabinets, or in my pantry on the higher shelves.  This cabinet houses my mixing bowls, Pyrex bakeware, and my small collection of pots and pans.

Before the spice rack, everything you see in the picture above was also crammed into this cabinet.  Now both cabinets, and the spice rack, are easier and nicer to use.

Rory helped.






















* I apologize. 



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Cabi-nuh-uhs.

What I really want is to paint my kitchen cabinets white, inside and out.  (No, this post isn't about bathrooms).   But I cannot has white paint right now, so for the time being, I've put the doors back up:

In 2009, when the walls were white (and then beige, and then blue, and then beige again...), I had painted the insides of the cabinets a very dim sort of grayish blue.  And I loved it!

Except that now that the walls are grey, it's too close a grey to the color inside of the cabinets, and by contrast, the insides of the cabinets don't look blue, they look dirty.   So until I get the whole set of top cabinets painted, the doors are back up, to hide the blue.  

You may have noticed the tile back-splash in the before picture, and the lack thereof in the new picture.  The tile was only painted on: 

and mis-aligned

I really did like the "tile", and I was very proud of the job I did.  People who hadn't seen it before in person would actually touch it to make sure it wasn't real.  I call that a win, hehe.   But I painted over it when I painted the walls grey.  I actually do have a new idea for the back splash, but that's going to have to wait until I paint the cabinets.  You'll see.  

And since I realize you've never seen my *entire* kitchen, just bits and pieces of it, here's the whole thing, mess and all: 

all the walls are the same grey.  the weird blue and purple tones in this
pic are just from weird lighting coming in the windows

Things that are going to be changing in the coming months:

• the upper cabinets
• the backsplash
• the light fixture
• the steins on top of the cabinets (I swear, officer, they're not mine, they're my boyfriend's)
• the pantry insides + door hardware
• the cabinet knobs and handles
• the light fixture over the sink?  maybe? 
• the total lack of a color scheme aside from the wall color and that one red dishtowel

After the whole bathroom thing happens. 

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