After I wrote about my camera troubles, I decided to try the very last SD card at my disposal. The camera had given me the CHR/CHA error with 3 different SD cards, so I didn't have much faith.
Wouldn't you know it? The fourth card was the charm!
So I bring you some scenes from my dining room. First up, the old hutch.
I'm sorry, but I have to tell you this story.
I saw the hutch back in April on craigslist. This was the photo provided. Looking at the picture, you can see a lot of other stuff. Bags, boxes, etc. I dismissed this, thinking that all of those things had recently come out of the hutch, and that's why they were placed haphazardly around it. Hold your hats dear readers, this is a good one.
The woman promised to give me the hutch for $65 after I (somewhat misleadingly) told her it was for our first house. I assumed that her "I remember my first house" attitude made her an older woman. False.
My Dad and I drove out to Bristol (a 50 minute ride) and found a young Mom at the door in a flannel shirt and... oh my God, is she not wearing any pants? Oh, wait... she is just wearing tan shorts. Ok, thank God.
"I forgot that you were coming today" she said, inviting us inside... into her Hoarder's Paradise. She secured some dogs in the kitchen out of the way, while one of her kids showed me his toy. I thought I saw a chicken out of the corner of my eye, and I started freaking out a little.
Bringing us into the dining room, I learned that the "stuff" was probably never inside the hutch, she just lived in a pig pen. (Disclaimer: I don't think there were actual pigs, but I didn't see the whole house). A small cat walked in between my legs, and I relaxed a little bit. "it was just a cat!" I thought to myself, "chickens in the house with dogs would never work." And I laughed at my foolishness.
As it turned out, the hutch was in great shape, aside from some dog teeth marks on one of the corners, nothing that I couldn't fix. So I gladly handed over my $65 and we got to the Herculean task of getting the hutch into my Dad's truck.
Did you notice that I never, ever, ever ask my husband to do these tasks?
The hutch did not separate. It was one solid piece that weighed about a thousand pounds. There was a lot of grunting, shifting and shimmying that went into getting that bad boy into the truck - and it required all 3 of us to do it. About 30 minutes after we arrived, we were set to go.
After a round of laughs, I said "Dad, did you see the cat at first? I thought it was a chicken!"
"It was a chicken! There were 3 of them in the other room!" He responded, completely befuddled.
"Can you imagine how Dan would have reacted if I brought him to do this?" I asked, right before buying him lunch, a few beers, and putting gas in his truck.
Since we were moving soon, I left the hutch in my parents garage and promised I would return for it at some point. Luckily, we had plenty of strapping young men to load and unload it at the new house.
I don't want to make this story any longer than it already is, so I'll wrap it up by saying this: the adventure of getting the hutch was nothing compared to the amount of work required to refinish it. Fortunately, I was finally able to hook up our paint gun (the Heavens opened and Angels sang) so the paint job went quickly.
Here she is now:
I did mess around with the arrangement of the dishes when I first set it up, but I'm still working on it. I think I might need to add some additional color or pattern (with fabric or paper) to the back of the cabinets to make the dishes pop a little bit more.
The Mr. was quite pleased when I completed this project, because it meant I could finally unpack the dining room boxes that had spent the entire summer just hanging out. And I was happy because I noticed that the color of the hutch is a pretty close replica to the plates we used at our wedding. Subconscious color selection, for the win.
Like I said, the arranging needs work, but at least it all fits... sort of.
And now, without further delay - check out the chandelier!
There is still a ton of work to be done in this room, but hey - now we have the light to be able to do it!
- Paint dark brown wood trim "linen white"
- Paint walls: color suggestions needed!
- Hang blue and white plates from the wedding collection
- Curtains!
- New (to me) dining set?
- Get my Dad to finish patching the ceiling and wall (this should probably take top priority)
What do you think? I know, you're too excited about the camera being fixed to care about anything else. You're not alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment