The Cat Vs. the Cabinet

A few months ago, I did a post about my solution to keeping my dog out of my cat's food.  I used a cooling rack to fence off the space underneath a freestanding butcher block and placed a stack of tins at the entrance, leaving a space just big enough for the cat to get through:

That entry proved to be one of my most popular posts ever.

But on Saturday, Doug and I went to Strasburg, PA, one of our favorite antiquing towns, and I fell in love with a vintage cabinet that I just had to have.  I love old porcelain-topped cabinets, but this one beat out any of the ones I've seen before.

It had a red top.  I love red.

And it wasn't just a plain red top--it had a stripe built into the edging:

We debated and debated about buying it.  It wasn't the money that was the issue--they were asking only $75 for it, and it was in pretty good shape.  Our problem now is where to put the things we fall in love with because we're running out of space.  We had to leave it behind on Saturday anyway, as we had driven up in my little Honda Civic.

But by noon the next day, we were in the SUV going back to get it.  I decided Pax could eat at the top of the steps that lead from our kitchen to our finished attic.  Jodie has had hip surgery and can't climb steps, so I knew the food would be safe from her on the next level, and Pax goes up and down multiple times a day because his litter box is in the upstairs bathroom. Besides, he's gotten a little chubby, and we figured it wouldn't hurt to make him work a little for his food.

So we got the cabinet home and started working on it.  I didn't take any before pix because it really wasn't a huge transformation.  But the shelf was thin and sagging, so Doug made me a new one out of a nice thick piece of plywood.  We also traded out the hardware, which wasn't original anyway.  Our kitchen cabinets have bin pulls (shown in the pictures below), so I got a bin pull for the drawer and a brushed nickel knob for the door.

I also discovered that it was already painted the same color as our cabinets, so I decided to give it a coat of paint to freshen it up.  Although I like the vintage chippy look, this wasn't vintage chippy, it was sad and peeling.  All of the paint around the legs was gone, suggesting that the piece had sat in someone's damp basement.  It looked like it was wearing some old brown boots.

It's now installed in the corner where the butcher block was before, and as Doug said, "It looks like it should have always been there." Even Pax seems to approve:

The best part is that we picked up some extra storage space, which we didn't have with the butcher block.  I guess this is now my red cabinet:

And of course, I had a great time rearranging things and moving stuff around.  I really like to rearrange stuff.