I’ve Got A Secret

The secret closet door china hutch is painted…boom!  And all setup and fully stocked…double boom!

When we last left off in our little “let’s turn a china hutch into a hidden closet door” saga, we had yet to paint the hutch.  And boy did this guy need a couple coats of paint.  It needed paint bad…kind of like how our dog badly needs a bath after rolling in turds and dead snakes all afternoon.  You see, the hutch came with our house.  The old owners had left it for us.  And since the old house stunk of mustiness, the hutch still smelled of mustiness.  It needed paint.  Not just for looks and such, but to cover up the stench.

Choosing the colors for the hutch was pretty simple.  I knew I wanted to paint the majority of the hutch white, the same white as the trim, but paint the inside of the glass door section a darker color.  Our wedding china is primarily white, so to help make the dishes pop, the dark navy would be the perfect color.  It’s one of the shades in our ombre staircase balusters, it looks great with the light blue door color also in the dining room, and looks AMAZING against our china.

With the paint colors selected, I went to work painting the hutch and the doors using a brand spanking new paint sprayer that we picked up from Lowes.  More details on the paint sprayer tomorrow.  I can’t believe that I haven’t come home with one sooner!  The finish is amazing, it takes MUCH less time to paint furniture, and uses less paint than a brush.

I layered on three thin and even coats of primer on the hutch followed by three thin and even coats of glossy white paint (it’s Valspar’s Betsy’s Linen in a gloss). We waited about 24 hours for the paint to harden up, which was another bonus of using a paint sprayer.  The coats of paint were so thin that even just an hour after painting a cabinet door it was already dry to the touch.  Only 24 hours after finishing painting the hutch, it was dry enough to assembe and not sticky at all.  But anyway, back to our gorgeous, freshly painted, no longer stinks of old musty house, cabinet.

We first attached the hutch to the wall and made sure that it still worked well on its casters, before re-attaching the doors.  We chose to recycle the old hinges, since they were old and pseudo rusty and gave the cabinet a bit more character.

But I did end up picking up some new door pulls for the upper and lower cabinet doors.  I wanted an upgrade from the old, boring wood door pulls that the cabinet used to sport.  The new pulls came from Lowes in the cabinet hardware section and only cost $1.49 each.

I love how the coppery color in the door pull plays off the coppery color going on in the hinges.  And the darker, oil rubbed bronze shade plays off the curtain rod and the light fixture in the room.

With the glass, upper doors attached it’s kind of hard to see the inky blue cabinet interior thanks to the glare from the super sunny room.  So let’s take a peak at the cabinet with the doors open.

And a wide angle shot with the whole room.

Colby and I are totally digging the cabinet, and not just because it’s also a secret closet door.  It’s purty!  If we were French we would say “it adds the je ne sais quoi to the room”.  It’s like the room finally feels finished or homie.  But of course we didn’t just stop at putting the cabinet back together again…we…and by we I mean just me…had to stock it.  Colby doesn’t seem to share my great joy in decorating or house accessory tweaking.  Apparently he wants to keep his man card for another day.  He did just barely get it back after losing it for awhile for watching “My Fair Wedding” while at a local bar.

I shopped our house for accessories for the cabinet.  On the open shelf, I went with a Nate Berkus for Target accessory that I just picked up, so it didn’t have a home yet.  To go along with it, I added an antique pitcher filled with paint brushes.

I know it’s weird to store paint brushes in your dining room but it works for me.  I use them just about everyday so I like them accessible and not in the basement.  On the inside of the upper cabinet area, I filled the bottom shelf with our wedding china, the middle shelf with some found glass bottles, and the top shelf with some soda bottles wrapped in jute (they’re leftover wedding reception decor).

The two shelves of bottles probably won’t stay long term.  I was just searching for some filler decor and shopped around my personal decor store…aka the basement…until I found something I could use.

I’m not sure what I want to store in the cabinet long term, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out along the way.  In Angie dream world it would be full of our wedding place settings, maybe some service pieces, or the wine glasses from the kitchen.  But I also fear of breakage when we open and close the china hutch door so we’ll see.  But for now, the bottles are working out just fine.

And I’m loving the contrast of the white, sparkly dishes (they’re Royal Doulton’s Precious Platinum series) against the navy background.  This pic doesn’t even do it justice.  It’s so much more contrast-ie in person.  It’s a word I swear.  It’s right up there in validity along with right-indeed-ie-doo and re-sarcastical-izing.

I’m debating painting the back of the open shelf, the one with the pitcher and urchin-ie thing, navy as well.  But I’m leaning more towards leaving it as is these days.  I kept thinking a darker shelf and back would make the white pitcher stand out more, but I’m starting to really like the white on white.

So now that you’ve seen all the ridiculously good looking parts of the china cabinet, you know…the Zoolander-like ridiculously good looking parts, let’s take the party South a bit.  The dirty South.  We still have a little bit of finish work to tackle to make the closet door hutch look more built-in and hide the casters under the cabinet.

And while we’re at it, we also need to figure out how to replace the baseboard trim piece that we had to rip out to make the hutch door open to it’s full potential.  We haven’t quite figured out those parts yet but we’ll keep you posted when we do.

Pssst…So while we were up to our eyeballs in paint and hinges this weekend, what were you all up to?  Any painting projects?