30

I have officially been ushered into the 30's. My bday was Wednesday and I actually had a party, for me. Wow!! I can't remember the last time I had a birthday party, I guess I had one for my 21 bday, but that was actually a baby shower for baby #1 seeing that she was born a month later. Anyway, I just had a few ladies over and we sat on the back patio and had chocolate cake. It was a nice time!! My sister-in-law, Amy, came over from NY and was a big help with getting things decorated and everything. Rick was home from work early and ran to t he store for the last minute items that I forgot. For my present, he got me a new set of pans. Very nice pans, I almost want a rack to hang them on, maybe we will make one.;D

Back to the grindstone.. I have a big job that is scheduled for Monday, so I started working on it today. Nothing like giving myself enough time. Oh well, it is turning out well. I will post pics on Monday.

Hutch

I did finish what I had of the hutch. I talked to my mom and she said there are some more metal pieces to go inside. So we are going to visit them tomorrow and I will pick up all of the stuff that she has. I did need to get a new latch for the bottom door because the original was to rusted, but I haven't put it on yet because it looks to new. I am going to try and rough it up a little so it is not so shiny. I am very happy with how things turned out, the color and grain of the wood is just gorgeous.

While at my folks this weekend I am going to look around for more things to refines. I enjoyed doing the hutch so much that I want to do more. In my spare time of course!! Speaking of spare time I did just measure for another job! Maybe we can afford a cleaning lady!!!! (I can dream, right?)

Fair.

I took the kids and a friend to the Bridgewater Fair. I always love looking at the exhibits and animals, but the hightlight for the kids was the motorcycle stunt show. It was VERY cool. Especially to a 5 yr old boy.

DQ and her friend had a blast.

My favorite pic:

Progressing and cleaning...

Things are progressing very well on the hutch. I was able to strip, stain, and poly all of the small wood pieces and doors. Also with all of the tin pieces I was able to use my new handy dandy wire brush drill bit and get most of the paint and rust off, then I repainted them with an ivory spray paint.

I know some of you are wondering Why did she take off all of the paint just to put on more paint? All I can say is genius is a work in progress!! Actually I had to take off all the paint to get a smooth surface so the new paint would look good. I wasn't planning on re-painting anything, but after stripping things down I realized that originally the inside of the top had been painted. So, I decide to keep it that way. Although I still need to strip off all the old paint to get a smooth flat surface.

I have really been enjoying doing all the work on the hutch, I love working with all the different tools and seeing how things turn out. The only down side is that I don't spend anytime inside cleaning. When I say cleaning I mean basic stuff, like cleaning off the dinner dishes so the kids can have breakfast. In my perfect world I would have someone come in and clean for me. I don't wish for a big house or fancy cars (although I LOVE the new mustangs), I just wish someone could come clean for me. Then I could spend all my time in my sewing room or working with power tools. Oh well, I am going to get off the computer and start the dishes and mop the kitchen floor, which I am only doing out of necessity, because you can't walk through with out sticking. :D

Ramblings about stripping..

We had a productive day today. Rick had the day off and we took the top of the hutch apart so we can start to refinish it. It took almost 3 hours just to take everything apart, we had to remove the back of the hutch because the veneer was warped and peeling, but we will replace it with 1/4 inch plywood. We took a lot of pictures today mostly so that we will remember how it goes back together! The hardest part was removing the tin flour hopper, it was nailed into a wood frame which made it tricky to get out without bending it, but I don't think we did to much damage. We were again able to save the hinges and latches, they just needed to be soaked in stripper and cleaned with steel wool and some silver polish. There is still a little rust on them, but I think it adds to the character. It seems that the inside of the hutch was originally painted a beige color, so we will probably take off as much paint as we can then repaint it. When we took off the back we found some old recipes and a little booklet that had fallen. The booklet is a "Sun-Maid raisins" recipe book from 1921, how cool is that?

This is what the top looked like this morning.

This is what it looks like now. You are looking through the back to the front, also it it upside down. To get a point of reference look at the strawberry wallpaper.

The back of the doors. There are 2 spice jar holders and a paper holder (I think). Everything is original, except the color.

The flour hopper (upside down). and part of the back panel. I love how functional this piece was, Grandma Hansen said she had one in her kitchen growing up and that her mom would make cookies and her famous noodles on the it. I always love the stories that go with the furniture. I forgot to mention that on the bottom section of the hutch (look at the previous post) the tin top pulls out to a large work area. Also behind the door is a pull out cutting board and 2 shelves that pull out. The 3 side drawers are actually tin with a wood front.

The recipe booklet from 1921, there are about 30 pages and 92 recipes. I might actually try to make one, the raisin-ginger bread sounds pretty good.

Stripping...

Over the past week Rick and I have finished the bottom half of the hoosier hutch that I took out of my parents old house. There were at least 6 layers of paint that I saw: 2 layers of white, pink, yellow, green, and black.

The trickiest part was the pullout tin top, which had 3 layers of paint. I couldn't use a metal scraper because I didn't want to scratch the tin so I ended up using stripper and a special scrub brush. It came out pretty good, I still need to shine it up a little with polish, but I will get to that.