Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Banishing the 80s Apples

Doesn't this little gem take you right back to the late 1980s? I can just see it in the corner of a kitchen with potatoes and onions in the drawers....


In addition to the apples and leaves painted on the drawers, it even had a cute little leaf on the top:


I almost passed it by in Goodwill when Doug and I walked there on a balmy afternoon last weekend.  It was marked $30, which seemed kind of high.  But when I shook it, I realized that it was solid wood, including all of the shelves, drawers, and even the back. Not a piece of particle board in sight.

So we paid for it, taped a sold sign to the top, walked home, and came back with the car to pick it up a half hour later.

I envisioned it painted a glossy white, but it wasn't until the next morning that I realized what I wanted to do with it.  Our 1930s bungalow has a tiny bathroom on the first floor with just a pedestal sink--no cabinet, no linen closet, so of course no storage.  

I had a vintage hamper filled with extra bath towels right inside the door, and I was willing to give that up for some drawers that would hold stuff like bandaids, ointments, extra tubes of toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, etc.


So I primed the wood with blocking primer, but those cute little apples kept showing through. The yellow wood didn't want to be subdued either, but four coats of paint finally took care of it.  

After the paint dried, I reinstalled the black hardware on the door and replaced the faux ceramic (i.e., plastic) knobs with glass ones from Home Depot (total cost for 3 knobs = $11.91).  I think it fits perfectly into our little vintage black and white bathroom:


The side compartment holds toilet paper and a few other items:


We have a drawer for brushes and makeup:


And one for extra toothpaste, mouthwash, and dental floss:


And maybe now we can actually find a bandaid when we need one:



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