My Hoosier Cabinet

Hoosier Cabinets in their prime - 

http://www.antiquecountryfurniturestore.com/Hoosier_Cabinet.html

I find great joy in re-storing things.  There is just something about working hard, especially with my husband to make something gross looking, look beautiful again.  My parents have been housing a Hoosier Cabinet that used to be my grandmother's for me in their basement for longer than I am sure they wanted to, and I have been waiting to restore it for sometime now.

When we moved back up to Northwest Indiana after our short stint in Southern Alabama and bought a new house, there was a great need for my kitchen to have more storage space.  Apparently the people that lived here before either didn't have a whole lot of kitchen supplies or I just own way too much, but either way there was just not room for everything.  This project started back at the beginning of October, but things got a little interesting with my third pregnancy about the same time so it got put to the back burner.  We finally finished it mid-February.  And I LOVE it!!!!   It has all the extra storage I need (well at least for the important everyday things) and it looks nice in the kitchen to boot.  After talking about it with my Nana, I found out that she got it at an estate sale when she was a young wife for only $4.50!!!  What a bargain!!!  She also had it redone - stripped, stained and oiled; but after many years of being loving used it needed a little TLC.  We did a ton of work to it!  It was stripped, re-stained and varnished.  We put all brand-new vintage hardware on it.  And we also got a new laminate piece for the counter top.  We also made it a little more user friendly - I really didn't have a reason for a flour mill or sugar jar or the roll-top door - So we took them out and made more shelf space. Overall we did a good job at keeping the costs down - it was a little over $200 and an amazing amount of elbow grease to re-do it.  We tried to keep it as close to what it would have looked like way back then, and I think we did a pretty good job of it.