Our lovely china cabinet

Over the past six months to a year, David and I have been looking off and on for a china cabinet. Even with all of our added kitchen storage from our kitchen renovation, we still really needed a china cabinet or hutch of some sort to store serving pieces, wine glasses, placemats, napkins, etc. We had the perfect spot in mind in our dining room - nestled into the corner by the extra (somewhat useless) door into the hallway. Because this wasn't the biggest space and we wanted this to be a nice piece of furniture that we'd keep for a very long time, we had a list of requirements:

• Not larger than 43 inches wide across the main section (and preferably as close to this width as possible to maximize storage space and make it a more "normal" size for when we use it in a different home 
• Solid wood with a natural finish (maple or cherry were our top choices)
• Glass doors 
• Dovetailed drawers, if it had drawers 
• The back couldn't be a mirrored surface (my personal requirement)

David's parents wanted to give us whatever china cabinet we picked out as a wedding present. Per our usual routine, the first place we searched was Craigslist. We like to start with craigslist not only because it helps us buy something nicer for a more affordable price, but because I really like the idea of repurposing / reusing existing pieces of furniture. Going to a big furniture store and buying something new just for the sake of something new feels a bit wasteful to me when all of these great pieces of furniture are out there just looking for a new home. I do have a list of things that I am less comfortable buying on craigslist - we plan to do a specific post about this sometime in the future. We had a few leads on Craigslist, but nothing we were 100% in love with. We had looked a little bit in some locally-crafted furniture stores up in VT as well as in some bigger furniture stores down in MA and at some antique/thrift shops, but nothing we really loved / felt was worth the high price tag. At least, not until we had fully exhausted our Craigslist furniture quest. 

A little over a week ago, I found one on Craigslist that looked like it had great potential. It was exactly 43 inches wide (we emailed the woman several times to get measurements for all sections on the china cabinet to make sure we knew exactly how it would fit in our space). It was made of cherry wood with a cherry finish, had glass fronts and sides, dovetailed drawers, and was listed at a very reasonable price. The one odd thing was that the back piece was made of a piece of plywood paneling with a light colored finish. We forgot to take a before picture, but with the beautiful cherry wood everywhere else, this fake-looking back piece really looked out of place. However, everything else was great and the back piece was fixable, so we packed the china cabinet into our truck (with the help of Harvie and Susan who were visiting for the weekend) and headed home. 

This is an image from Home Depot that shows basically exactly what the back paneling looked like.

Despite our careful efforts, we didn't quite make it home without incident. One of the wooden knobs vibrated off its screw and was lost somewhere on the road, and a small chip came off of the inside of one of the front legs. We saved the chip, but as luck would have it have since misplaced it. Neither thing is irreparable though. Once we got the cabinet inside, Susan and I headed to the basement to look at all the left over paint samples David and I had acquired. I really wanted to try painting the back piece an antique teal color. We used printer paper and Q-tips to test each paint color and to look at a few mixed samples, and finally settled on a 50/50 mix of Pewter Tray and Swan Sea, both Behr paints. We first tried to paint the paneling in place, but realized that wasn't going to give a nice clean finish. We then took the back piece off entirely, laid it flat on the kitchen floor, and painted it there. We did two coats of paint, though the first coat was in another light color that we had laying around because we didn't have enough of our mixed color to do two full coats. After it dried we nailed the back piece into place and stepped back to take a look. What a difference! I absolutely love, love, love this china cabinet. David is also a big fan. It has the simple look we were going for, the rich wood tones, and the newly pained blue back panel really just gives it an element of uniqueness and interest. It fits perfectly in our intended space, and I can't wait to start filling it. Without further ado, here are the final pictures! 

You can see the missing knob on the lower left door here - we will try to find something similar to replace that with. We'd also like to replace the gold knobs on the pullout tray section (for setting dishes on, etc.). They don't look too bad in this picture, but in person the gold finish is a bit dated looking. 

I wanted to see how some of our white dishes looked in it :) You can see in this picture a little bit of candle wax residue that is on the bottom shelf - it seems to clean off easily, I just haven't done it yet. 

A big thanks to Harvie and Susan for the great wedding present! I'm seriously so excited. Having this in our dining room really makes the whole house just feel more like an "adult" home.