KKJW's Blog: China Cabinet!

I've wanted a china cabinet ever since we bought this house 5+ years ago. However, with having babies and other basic necessities to take care of first (white walls! *shriek* WHERE'S THE PAINT?!?!?), I held off. I mean, china cabinets can be extremely expensive! Also, they can be extremely ugly and unwieldy. I remember the one my great-grandmother had in her house and it looked something like this. Huge, ugly, and entirely unnecessary for a house our size. Well, heck, she lived in a mobile home - talk about out of place!

This past spring, I thought about it again and starting perusing the local ads on Craigslist to see if I couldn't find one that was A) reasonably sized, B) reasonably priced, C) in reasonably good condition, and D) at a reasonable distance from our house. Some were okay, others not so much, until I found The One earlier this week. It was reasonably sized, fit perfectly into the space I had in mind, was almost the same color as our dining room table (yay, a match!), was 25-30 years old but well kept, and was about six miles from our house. The person selling it wanted $100 for it, as he was moving and just wanted to get rid of it. $100 for The One? No problem!

The husband and I went to the man's house this morning to pick it up. Thankfully, my MIL watched our girls while we picked it up so that we could get all the seats out of our minivan. We loaded it up, took it home, set it up in the living/dining room, and voila! China cabinet of my dreams. I'm not crazy about the basket weave pattern at the bottom (think 1970s hip), but it will work for now. Then, while cleaning the glass shelves in the interior, I managed to slice open a finger and break one of the shelves. *sigh* At least it broke inside the cupboard portion, so it was an easy clean up. Still, something to get replaced. We move all our wedding china into it (mostly still wrapped up and/or in boxes into the cabinet portion), and it was fun to finally open it up ~7.5 years later and find that yes, it is indeed still intact. Lol!

I don't think the girls quite know what to do with it, which is great, but having it also necessitates some furniture moving around the living room. We'll see how it turns out as I've changed things three times and am still unhappy with it. Meh. Now that I'm thinking about it again (while typing this), I've got another idea! We'll see tomorrow. In any case, enjoy the pictures.