Hutch DIY

When we moved into our house three and a half years ago, I hadn't put any thought into any projects.  Except, of course, my long coveted privacy fence in the backyard.  Which I still don't have.  As I matured a bit and grew into the house, we started making changes to make it into our own.

One con about our home is the livingroom/dining room layout. There is really only one way to arrange it, and it's tough.  Especially for someone like me who when in high school, would spend an entire school night awake in my bedroom, pushing furniture around and rearranging things, from dusk til dawn.

So to make little changes is the only way I can 'rearrange' the room without actually moving anything. 

In the corner leading to the kitchen there is a built-in hutch type thing.  It's all attached to the wall.  And it's a mess.  It's the same color as the wallpaper, it blends right into the corner and is basically used as a catchall because nobody notices it. 

It's always been a little bit of nuisence to me.  It's in a weird spot and since I have no sense of style or design (truely, you'd be shocked at what I think is design smarts) I have been afraid to paint it or change it.  When I try rearranging stuff to make it look better, it ends up looking the same anyways, so I end up stuffing crap back into it and shutting the doors. 

But today, I finally got up the courage to paint. 

It was a long process to get started, which is why big DIY projects turn me off halfway through.  I just get bored.  I want immediate results.  I started withremoving the glass doors, stripping the shelves of 'stuff' and washing all of the surfaces I intended to paint.

You can see where the baby gate has scratched paint off the edges and where the dogs have jumped and smudged dirt and chipped off paint.  It was ugly.  Once I got painting, I started having fun and the creative juices started flowing.

I decided to also replace the hardware on the two drawers since one of the handles was bent down and both were scratched.  But the ones I found were white and they wouldn't pop like I wanted them to against a white paint job.  So I took a page from some other blogger's diy books, pulled out my Frogtape and added a small square backsplash for the hardware.

I ran into some trouble when I went to choose paint colors.  I never ask the advice of employees of the home improvement store I go to, mainly because I normally don't like what they present and I'm the kind of person who will take it anyways so as not to make them feel bad.  So when this gal kept hoovering and handing me color swatches, I started to sweat a little bit.  I had my camera along with photos of the hutch so I could keep it fresh in my mind. The colors she kept suggesting never strayed from a 'caramelly' color because it was universal and 'I'd always love it'.  But there is no carmel in the room and it just didn't fit our country style.  I wanted something bold and dark.  So once she left, I snagged two colors, Stone Grey and Winter Mood, and I ran to checkout. 

Once everything was painted and dried, it was time to start putting the 'stuff' back on it.  I had a picture in my mind of the finished product when I started this project.  But what was in my mind and what it ended up looking like were very different.  Mainly because I didn't own all of the pieces that were in my finished product image and really, it just wouldn't have fit our style. 

But I'm happy with finished hutch. 

I'm still debating on whether I should add something to the two sliding doors below.  They are very bright white with 'Winter Mood'.  What do ya'll think?

I left the doors off on purpose so that it wouldn't remain an unnoticed space.  It seems to have more of a purpose now.

Linking to Metaphoric Monday at BNOTP! and Make It Monday at Cottage Instincts!
DIY Day at ASPTL

Power of Paint Party! at Domestically Speaking
Remodelaholic's Anonymous Fridays!