The Green Hutch

I'm linking to Primitive and Proper :)

I finally finished the hutch!  If you remember back about a month I posted about finding a hutch on craigslist for $20.

It needed a lot of work, but that work is done, and now the hutch is happily located in the kitchen helping me to keep our house a bit more organized.

First step was to sand the entire hutch, which was a lot of work!  I ended up caving and buying an electric sander because my arms were so tired. After sanding the whole piece I worked with my future father-in-law to make sure that the piece was structurally sound.  It was made without adequate support in the back and over the years had begun warp and lean backwards.  Dana and I pulled off the bottom supports (which were falling apart and did not look cute) and attached a solid piece of wood along the bottom to help support the entire piece.

Then we lifted it off the ground by  adding feet made of two bundt feet from Lowe's stacked on top of eachother.  This is a picture of me drilling holes in the feet so that we could attach the two together (and then to the hutch) with a really long screw

Once the piece was structurally sound, I began the cosmetic improvements to the piece.  We chose Tumbleweed Green from Valspar in an oil-based paint to achieve nice even coverage.

And then it was just painting everything... which took a bit of time.  It ended up taking two coats to get good coverage, and it took a while to dry in between each coat, but the look is well worth it!

After painting the green, I decided to do a dark, rick brown for the inside and shelves of the hutch.  I went with a buckeye brown latex paint that came in the small sample size.  It took three coats to get nice even coverage, but the look is worth it!

And here is the final product all set up in our kitchen!  It is so nice to have the extra storage space and the splash of color in our townhouse :)

I am a master sander

I know that I promised a great post for today, but the weekend did not go as planned.  This post will be a random recap of my newest adventure into DIY projects :)

Last Saturday I went out with my friends Laura and Keith to the city wide garage sales taking place in Nixa.  I found a few things to add to the wedding, but was not able to find any of the big pieces of furniture I was on the hunt for.  I was hoping to find a credenza to refinish for our living room, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Saturday night Laura and Keith came over with Laura's husband Dave, and we had a nice bbq and sanding party!  Laura found some great deals at the garage sale, and she wanted to start sanding down her new barstools to get prepped for painting.  Luckily I had a sanding project that I was working on and we turned the night into a sanding party.

About a week ago Cameron and I bought a hutch off of Craigslist for $20!

It needs a lot of work, but it is the perfect size to fit between the fridge and wall in our new townhouse.

The space between the fridge and the wall is 4'3" and the hutch is 3'9" wide.  Fits like a glove!  We really needed a hutch for added storage because the kitchen has very limited cabinet space.

I figure that we can showcase our new dishes and pretty canisters on the shelves and use the drawers and cabinets at the bottom to store larger items like crock-pots and tupperware.  

So at my sanding party I began with basic sandpaper and after three hours of esentially getting nowhere (there is a lot of grime and old paint on this puppy) I broke down and bought an electric sander :)

This little guy was at Wal-Mart and he is my new best friend!  I was able to sand almost the whole hutch in a matter of an hour and it would have taken me a lot longer without him!

The hutch is well on its way to looking awesome in a pretty olive green like the hutch in the picture below.

Over the next couple of months I am sure that you will see a lot more furniture projects as I get stuff ready for our new townhouse!  Hope that you all don't mind :)