Trash & Treasures

We finally finished our wood project!! When we first moved here we stumbled upon someone’s old, trashed, left for dead on the side of the road, china cabinet. I could see why it was thrown out; it was stained, missing some shelves, missing a drawer front… some of the wood was even rotting away. But Steven and I saw the true beauty within.  We left the top half to the trash, there was no saving that thing. But we were able to take some wood from the top to repair the drawer front and add a shelf.

Once we got it home Steven went to work sanding it, and cutting/gluing wood, while I went to work trying to find fabric and paint. Steven got his part done in about 3 days… I on the other hand took FOREVER to find fabric. It was about 3 trips to Satwa (the only town to find fabric) a few trips to malls and shopping centers and a lot of hunting online. Once I would find something I thought I liked, I would spend forever debating on if it was right or not, only to go back to look at it again and find it was sold out. I found these pre-made curtains that were cute, but pricy. Again by the time I said, “Fine, those will do.”  They were gone.  I finally got my decision making skills together along with a trusted friend and decided on this:

It’s not great, but it’s the best non-Arab lookin fabric I could find here in the Middle East. Next we had to decide on paint. That was easy! Or so I thought. It was going to be blue, that way if we found better fabric later, blue was neutral enough that it would hopefully still work… well Sky Blue, ended up looking much more like Smurf Blue, and I was not about to have a giant Smurf sitting in our kitchen area. One more trip back to Satwa for another gallon (which was under $5 btw). This time we went with National Blue.

 

After I finished painting it for a second Steven gave it a light sand which made the Smurf blue show up in some places and actually gave it a nice refinished look.

Next we painted the hard ware silver and hit the whole thing with a gloss finish varnish. I just have to finish sewing the curtains, but it’s pretty much done, and it only took 4 ½ months! Ha! I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, especially since we spent just under $30.00 on the whole thing.

And now we have a great place to hide our food and dishes!