This is the story of a hutch...

We had been married about two years. We were living in Washington, NJ. We were about to move to Columbus, OH. We were out garage sale-ing. We came across a table and hutch, $40 for the pair. We needed a bigger, made of actual wood, table. The hutch was icing on the cake. Being a young married couple with our first baby, we didn't have a lot of extra cash. This was a great deal, and we knew it. However, I wasn't crazy about the color of the wood, or the shiny finish on the tabletop. We put them both in our storage area because there was no room in our tiny, one bedroom, barely more than a studio, apartment.

When we moved to Columbus, the table and hutch came out of storage and took their places in the new, much larger, apartment. But the Mr. was still not loving the hutch. I have pictures of the hutch in its original finish, but they were taken in our pre-digital days and I'm too lazy to scan one. We made a couple more moves, and ended up buying a house in Charlotte, NC. One day I was looking at the hutch. Lincoln had mentioned a few times that he just didn't like the hutch and wanted to get rid of it. So I thought, "I'm going to paint this puppy with a crackle finish. What have I got to lose?" So I did. I started first thing in the morning and had it mostly done by the time Lincoln got home that evening. (I didn't do a base coat because I wanted the wood to show through the crackle. That made it quicker.) I loved it. Lincoln loved it. We loved it for many years.



But it is now 2011. Crackle finish is very 2000. The finish on the hutch served us well for many years. It got lots of compliments from company. But it was definitely beginning to look dated and dingy. It was time to go.

I decided not to sand it down. I went back and forth on that decision many times. I proceeded with it unsanded because I thought the crackly paint underneath would add to the chippy, layers of paint look I wanted. Remember, I wasn't looking for a clean, smooth, look. Once the paint was on and dry, I started distressing. I sanded edges here and there, there and here. The more I sanded, the more the layers of paint seemed right.

And you know what? I love the hutch again.






I left the inside the way I painted it when I did the crackle finish. I kind of just painted on and wiped off and added water for a wash and anything else I could think of to give it a rough look. I still love that.



I think maybe I'll replace the cabinet door pulls with sparkly glass knobs. I think it is begging for just a touch of sparkle.

And did you notice the Valentine's tree? The girls did that the other day. They put anything pink that they could find on it. That's a stuffed hippo with Build a Bear fairy wings sitting proudly atop the tree. It's very funny and cute.