WELL WORTH THE WORK

For those of you who have purchased a home, do you remember the walk-throughs? Those thousand or so homes you walked through, looking for the exact home you want to pluck you life-blood into. And you have this list with like a bazillion things on it that you are hoping this house has.

My list had lots and lots of things crossed out.


In fact there were only a few things on my list that my house had.


A roof that didn't leak was one of them.


Anywho, on the day I moved into my home I noticed two things.
1. The garage was being held straight by a 2x4 (last summer we had to tear out and put in a new beam to fix that problem)
2. My house didn't have a pantry.

Now who in their right mind, if you are female, builds a home without a kitchen pantry? I don't know, but the lady who built this place didn't put one in.


Oh there is room for a pantry, there just isn't one.

And since I really didn't want to build one (I have already put up too many 2x4's in this home) and I really needed someplace to put the canned goods, (the island just is too far to bend down, plus things get lost down there. I swear, it is worse than the dryer at eating things.

So I decided to find and buy a stand alone pantry. The problem was two-fold. The ones that were the size I wanted cost close to a thousand dollars, and the ones in my price range were too small.


I decided to get creative and go looking for anything with doors and shelves.

I found this! It is an armoire with shelves inside.

And while it was pine, like my cupboards, it had been antiqued. So there was all of this black stuff on the wood that made it look old. It also made it look too dark next to my cabinets. (cupboards, cabinets...same thing)

After trying a sander, which would have taken two plus weeks, and some varnish stripper, which did nothing to the black stuff... I once again got creative. I tried Goof Off!

If you have never used the stuff, you are missing out. It removes weird stuff from almost anything. I love to use it when I have those painting oops.

So here is what the Goof Off did.

After scrubbing till my arms wanted to fall off, and going through two bottles (so far) of Goof Off, I decided to stain one door and see how it looked.

See the black still on the inside of the Armiore. The door has been stained.

The door on the right has been stained, the one on the left has not. I still have to take the black stuff off of the sides and inside then I will stain the whole thing. I can't wait for it to be finished.

I'll post a picture when it is done.