Hoosier Redo

One of the hobbies I love is redoing old furniture and making it look new or totally different. One of the latest redos I've done is this Hoosier. My dad grew up with one is his home - his mom used it daily in their kitchen. He saw one many years ago somewhere and bought it with the idea of fixing it up but it sat for years and years with no luck. I was lucky enough to have it come to me when my dad decided to clean some things out. I immediately went to work on it, not wanting it to sit forever in my garage. I love how it turned out!! It's become a great storage area. I wish I had room for it in my kitchen so I could use the counter top, which pulls out to make a larger space. The other cool thing about it is that it has a flour sifter in it, which I don't use, but it's still cool :) The top cabinet on the left is where my grandmother would have put her flour, and the bottom cabinet on the left is where she would have put her bread bowl to catch the sifted flour.



When redoing furniture, the key to making a painted peice come out really nice and smooth is too sand or strip or prime it evenly, then paint and then sand it again. Lightly sanding between each coat of paint keeps the peice nice and smooth. I sand it heavier if I want an older look, like on this Hoosier. To seal the paint, I use Minwax Finishing Paste, which is a kind of wax. They use it on wood floors and stuff. I apply a light layer of that and let it sit for 15 or 20 minutes, then I buff it with steel wool. This way of finishing the peice of furniture gives a really smooth, professional look. I like to call it the Amish finish, like finished furniture would have looked back in the old days. I happen to really like that look. To finish this peice off, I sprayed all of the original hardware with an oil rubbed bronze spray paint, which really makes a nice contrast to the white paint on the Hoosier. I also painted the inside of the cabinets, drawers, and shelves a light sagey green, which was the original color I found while I was sanding it down. Someone else over the years had painted a bright red over the green, but I loved the subtleness of the green, so I went back to the original.

I'll try to post some of the other redos I've done soon.