The Old Kitchen Cabinet

I would have to say that this old kitchen cabinet, while beat up and showing it's age is one of my favorite pieces of furniture in the house.

The cabinet was made in 1904 by a craftman here in Michigan and was a gift to David's Grandmother. Over the years, this cabinet was used daily to store kitchen items and baking staples in the old family farmhouse.

When the farm was sold, the cabinet was given to David's mother who had no use for it. There wasn't room in her tiny kitchen for the cabinet so it sat in the garage and was used to store nuts, bolts, tools, and other items that were found in the garage.

Knowing my love of antiques, David's mother asked us before she passed away if we would like to have the kitchen cabinet. I immediately said, "YES!" It was in horrible shape having been in the cold damp garage all those years. We attempted to strip it down to it's original wood, but it was useless. There were so many coats of paint on it that we were actually harming theh wood withe all the strippers that we used. So we decided that we would strip off as many coats of paint we could, give it a good prime coat and repaint it, with all it's imperfections in place.

The old wooden top has a slide out bread board/pastry board that shows the years of wear from all the fresh bread and cookies made in the old farmhouse. The top and the pastry board are original to the piece. We no longer use it to roll out dough of any sort, but it's a treasured piece of David's family history. We did replace all the knobs to match the rest of the hardware in the kitchen.

We use it now to store odds and ends (none of the drawers or cupboards are very deep) and of course, it makes a great display piece for my Martha enamel canister set from Martha by Mail and my new blue set from the new Martha Stewart Collection at Macy's. The top shelf of the hutch is also a great place to stack my Martha green glass cake stands with a fruit display.

The lower right pull out drawer is actually a flour bin. It's very deep and currently holds all my copper cookie cutters!