I do not know of the exact year when Mike and I bought our first “real” furniture — a kitchen table with six chairs and a hutch. We lived in Franklin, Tennessee and desperately needed a new kitchen table but we did not want to make the expenditure until we had to. Mike sat in a chair one day and it broke. We went furniture shopping and soon thereafter, our new kitchen table, six chairs, and hutch–all manufactured by Pennsylvania House–were delivered. I don’t have a picture of it, but it was pine and I thought we were really going places!

Pine is a soft wood and it scratches fairly easy. We moved two more times in Franklin after the furniture was purchased and then we moved a whole bunch of times after that. Honestly, I kind of miss moving sometimes as I never really got a house filthy before we sold it. Crash bang boom on about ten moving vans and the furniture was seeing some real wear. In 2000, in Virginia, the table and chairs went to Michael’s son, Aaron, and they are now either with his stepon or ex-wife or on a curb somewhere. I have no idea and don’t really care. However, I kept the hutch and had it painted with a crackled finish along with vines, flowers, a gray cat and a honeybee…all things I loved then and still love today.

So just to summarize, when we were young we bought a new hutch. We moved it at middle age and had it crackled to look old. Now it is old and looks too old. Are we ever satisfied? The exterior has held up pretty well, but the inside has darkened to a very unattractive yellow brown. Here’s what it looked like last week.

I’m having a No Spend January so I didn’t want to spend any money but I did find a quart of paint in Walmart on sale for $5. It looked to be the right color (the one in the swipe.) I bought it in spite of my No Spend vow. The timing is right with the cold weather to try and improve this hutch–or move it to the garage and stack paint cans in it. I am not ready to do that yet.

And so the painting began. Three coats. Look how much lighter. These plates are white and the background doesn’t clash with them any more. It’s hard to get a good picture because if I turn on the light inside the hutch, I get a yellow glow that doesn’t really exist.

The glasses below show how “cleaned up” the interior of the hutch now is.

I put in this preserved boxwood wreath I had a Christmas to give some color since I’m placing all of my white china in the hutch. It has a yellow cast since I have the interior light on inside of the hutch. I’m going to replace that bulb with a LED that has a nicer appearance.

This room has terra cotta, red, purple, white green and some deep orange. I’d like to do a wall display of antique plates in some of those colors; but, unfortunately, I only have one of the plates! I have a lot of projects that are like that…they are always in progress! While I’ll continue to look for those plates, I wanted to display the one green transfer plate I do have.

So the light isn’t great, but here it is. I’m very happy with it. Now, I’ll start organizing the inside of the bottom of the hutch so that it is not crazy stuffed and jumbled up!

Now that I look at it, it may want new knobs as well!!