Hutch Transformation

July 2010

You may remember back in March I purchased this beautiful hutch on Craigslist. I have wanted a decorative hutch for my living room for sometime and was looking for something cheap that I could refinish myself. Well after bringing this hutch home and seeing how truly pretty it was in person it scared me to even think about refinishing it. I have never refinished a piece of furniture in my life and I really did not want to screw it up. I paid good money for it and knew that if I made this my first project I would regret it. So the search continued for a less expensive piece of furniture that I could refinish, mess up on, and not feel sick about it if things went wrong.

So I searched Craigslist every chance I could get just looking for the right piece of furniture for a refinishing project. I found this piece of furniture about 4 months later. It was perfect and it was another hutch. It's solid walnut. What a beauty, isn't she?

She was screaming "Fix me up please!" So $20 later she was mine all mine. I couldn't wait to get started. I had all these ideas floating around in my head about what I wanted her to look like when I finished.

You can see from these pictures that she was in need of some tender loving care. The previous owner had a cat that used this hutch as it's personal scratch toy. Not cool in my opinion! So after reading my favorite blog called

allthingsthrifty.com

and getting some great ideas and inspiration from the amazingly talented Brooke...I was ready to start my very own project. Now my only regret in refinishing this hutch is that I didn't take better pictures of the refinishing process. all I have are before and after pictures. But I will share with you some of the things I did that make her so shabby chic now.

To begin, this hutch originally had doors on the front that made cabinets. I removed the hinges and the wood pieces where the doors would have been and filled them in with spackle before sanding. After lots and lots of sanding and fixing all the cat scratch imperfections she was ready to be cleaned, primed, and painted. I used Kilz spray paint primer. I love this stuff. It works really well and I only needed 3 cans. Next I sprayed her with Crylon semi gloss Ivory paint.

I then painted the hardware a Rubbed Bronze.

This is what she looks like after being painted, but before I put the glaze on that will make all the details pop out.

I then glazed her with Ralf Lauren Faux glaze. I had it tinted a dark Mocca. After they tinted it once I asked them to do it again because I wanted it just a little bit darker. After glazing and replacing the hardware she looks amazing. Here is the end result.

You can really see how the glaze makes every detail pop out beautifully.

I couldn't decide for the longest time where I was going to put this hutch. I even toyed with the idea of selling her. But of course I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I am still thinking it would be nice in the babies room, but for now she's in my family room for all to admire. YEAH to a fabulous refinishing project. This was so much fun. Give a little shout out if you like how this hutch turned out.