They Had Me at Porcelain

Last weekend, Doug and I went to southern Delaware to do a small construction project for his sister and her husband. We really weren't planning on doing any junking, thrifting, or antiquing because we knew it would take us the whole day to get there, do the work, and drive home.

But as we pulled into his sister's neighborhood, we noticed lots of stuff in people's driveways....

A neighborhood yard sale.

We knew we had work to do, but Doug's sister directed us to the house across the street, where the woman was selling stuff following the death of an elderly relative in the Baltimore area. We went over to take a look, and I immediately fell in love with a vintage porcelain-topped cabinet. It was a little banged up, the shelf inside was missing, and some of the veneer was peeling off, but it was structurally solid, and the porcelain top was in mint condition. The lady was asking $30 for it, and I didn't quibble with the price--she had already turned down an offer for $25.

When we got it home, we used wood patch to fill in where the veneer had peeled off. I ripped out the lovely faux wood contact paper that had been used to line the entire interior as well as the drawer. And my handy husband made me a new shelf--he even crafted it so that it slid into the existing track inside instead of just resting on top of it.

We also removed the knobs--I knew they weren't original because I found a whole bag of similar ones in the drawer, which still had price tags on them from Hechinger, a home improvement store that went out of business a few years ago.  Doug can probably use these on the cabinet doors that he plans to install in the garage (we got 13 doors for $3 at another recent garage sale).

Once again, I had visions of glass knobs dancing in my head, so I went online and ordered some light blue ones from houseofantiquehardware.com. I only needed two, so the shipping cost almost as much as the knobs, but they are beautiful. Here's a sampling of the knobs this company offers:

Anyway, I painted the whole cabinet, including the new plywood shelf, with glossy white paint, cleaned off the porcelain top, and installed the knobs:

I think it will be perfect for towels and extra toilet paper in our upstairs bathroom:

It's a good thing we drove the pickup truck that day. I really don't think this would have fit in the back seat of the Honda.