A Refinished Hutch!!!

Holey moley, I’m practically bouncing in my chair to finally show you all the newly refinished hutch to go with the buffet I refinished oh…like two years ago.

The back story is that I wanted a china cabinet of certain dimensions to fit on a narrow wall in our dining room.  I found a buffet plus hutch on Craigslist that was just the right size.  It was an undesirable color, but that was no problem.

We brought them home for $100, and I got to work refinishing the buffet.  It was a learning curve, but it turned out beautifully and we’ve been enjoying it ever since.

BUT…the hutch sat in the basement, totally neglected, until I finally decided I had to just get’er done.  So up into the garage it came, and I got to work.

Here are some high quality cell phone shots (snort!) of the hutch, with its stemware and plate racks.

The wood was a sort of honey-orange color, and the “white” portions were a yellowish cream that seem to have been very sloppily glazed.  (as in… it looked kind of dirty.)

This isn’t a super high-quality piece of furniture, as you can see.  But it worked out to my advantage, because I could easily unscrew the stemware holders, which I tossed.

The plate rack wasn’t so easy to remove.  I had to take a saw to it.

But after all was said and done……Here it is!

When I did the buffet, I was a little shy with the paint stripper. This time around, it was the first thing I grabbed.

I stripped the paint and stain, sanded the thing to within an inch of its life, and then worked on the painted areas first. It took primer, a couple coats of paint, a couple coats of Polycrylic, and sanding between each layer. I also taped off the shelf and covered it with newspaper while I worked. I used spackle to fill the holes left by the plate rack because it was all I had on hand. I probably should’ve used wood filler, but oh well.

Once the painted areas were dry, I tackled the stained sections. Pre-stain, two coats of stain, and two coats of polyurethane. This one had a couple spots in the wood that took stain poorly. I sanded them like crazy, but in the end I had to accept the spots as adding “character.”

I’m just TOO excited about this silly thing.  It looks marvelous, fits the space perfectly, and gives me lots of room for storage and/or décor.  I moved my cookbooks over here from one of the kitchen cupboards as well, where they were always falling over.  I think they look very cheerful now that they see the light of day!

I accessorized for “everyday”, but I’m already itching to get some fall décor on this thing.  Stay tuned.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by!

Linked up to The Thrifty Home, The Shabby Creek Cottage, House of Hepworths