Before and After… I Couldn't Wait!

It's Friday of course! I'm so excited to show you a 'before' and 'current' picture of a piece of antique furniture my husband has been working on for me. I wanted to wait until I had the finished product before I posted pictures but I was couldn't hold off any longer. 

As with everything I collect, there is always a story attached to it but that is half the fun, right? 

In 2006, I bought my Grandpa's house and in it was a freestanding kitchen cabinet. The house had been built in 1950 and instead of installing cupboards in the kitchen as is the norm today, he used this piece of furniture that I nicknamed a Hoosier. 

Technically a Hoosier cabinet is a type of cupboard popular in the beginning of the 20th century and was named after the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Indiana.

Before

When I was selling the house, I removed the cabinet because it had been in the family for some decades and I put it on my 'someday' list to be restored. Since then it had to travel 1,000 miles to where I currently live and once it got delivered (Thanks, WHD), it was coming apart in several places. 

As I enthusiastically scrubbed it down and took the handles off, I realized that this was a much older piece than I originally believed it to be. At a quick glance, with the metal counter top and the chrome handles, it would appear to be from the late 1940s or early 1950s but when we lifted off the solid piece of metal that acted as the counter top, there was a wooden counter top that had seen many a knife mark. In fact it was so worn from being used as a cutting board that it was actually hollowed out in the centre. The metal piece had been added much later and probably only to save the deteriorating wood underneath. Also, once the chrome handles were removed, it exposed a second set of drill holes that proved that the chrome wasn't original. I was delighted! The final clue of its era was that inside the drawers and on one of the top shelves was the remnants of a thin coat of robin egg blue paint. So the glossy white paint was not original either! Now I was convinced that this was actually from the 1920s as I secretly hoped. 

It had even more value to me and I had an even greater desire to refinish it and have it in my house. As I surveyed it day after day, I realized that if I wanted it to look nice, it wasn't going to be me doing the refinishing work. So, I convinced my husband to take it (now in about 15 pieces) to his window manufacturing plant, Gildcraft Millwork where it promptly went back onto the 'someday' list and sat there (still in pieces) for the next 6 months. 

Well 'someday' has finally arrived! Last weekend, we drove out to my husband's shop and picked up the Hoosier, which I am happy to say now looks like this.

June 2013

Now that it is back at the house, we plan to stain it, add new hardware and an additional feature that I will save as a surprise when I post a picture of the final product. Stay tuned, it is going to get even better!