The Little China Hutch That Could

There is a bit of a trend developing in my last several projects. This is yet another furniture “flip”, spurned by the ever growing pile of crap in my basement that either needs to go, or get made over STAT. I’ve decided to call this series “Furniture February” in honor of all the junk that’s getting new life around here, what do you think?

This hutch (what constitutes a hutch, anyway?) was something that I’d already “flipped” once before after getting it from my old high school that was being torn down a few years back. Our first house had a very, very different style (if you could even call it that) than our current home, and sometimes when I look back I’m really surprised how much my tastes have done a complete 180 in such a short period of time.

At any rate, I was going through an intense shabby chic, bonafide country phase at the time, but not executing it well at all. (Think less “Joanna Gaines” and more “WTF is this mess?”) I painted the hutch with ivory spray paint and distressed the living shit out of it before patting myself on the back for a job well done. (It, in fact, was not a job well done. There were globs and globs of spray paint waving down the sides and drips ERRRRRRYWHERE. Terrible.) At the time I thought it was the bomb.

That photo actually makes it look a lot better than it is in person. It must be the fluorescent lighting in our basement…

Anyway, I wanted to de-countrify and class it up as much as possible by working with stuff I already had. The first thing I did was remove the decorative trim piece above the top shelf.

I wanted it to have nice, clean lines with zero fussiness. Which brings me to the bottom doors:

Those doors are fussy as hell. If you looked up fussy in the dictionary, there would be a picture of those doors. The smaller top doors are nice and plain with no inlay (or faux wood grain for that matter), which is what I wanted for the bottom and then it dawned on me: I’ll just flip those mofos around and use the backs for the fronts!

And that is exactly what I did. I filled the drawer pull holes with wood fill and gave the doors and hutch a good once over with my sander after the fill had time to dry.

I didn’t bother priming before I painted because it technically was already “primed”, and painting white over ivory wasn’t a big change. I hoped I would only need to do two coats, but I did end up doing three.

I cut in with my little brush…

…and then rolled on the fresh white.

So incredibly satisfying. I used an un-tinted, enamel trim paint by Benjamin Moore that I already had on hand, which I also used for my thrifted mid-century end tables.

After three coats of paint, Matt helped me to carefully move the hutch upstairs into the dining room, where I drilled new holes for the hardware and put the doors back on. I got these brass pulls from Amazon for so, so cheap! I had ordered them for another project and had four left over, so it was a nice little bit of serendipity that I was able to use them for this project as well. I love when stuff like that happens!

I made a little template by tracing the drawer pull holes onto paper so I knew the exact spacing, and would be able to ensure the placement of the pulls were the same on each door by lining the paper up square to the edge.

Usually this is where I screw it up royally, but this worked like a charm!

I should mention that you’ll want to drill your holes before painting, which is what I should have done. That way, you don’t have to worry about any paint chipping off due to a wayward drill or operator error. Luckily, that didn’t happen to me….this time.

After all the pulls were on, it was just a matter of putting the hinges and doors back on to the hutch. I had also given the hinges a nice fresh coat of flat white spray paint by Rustoleum so they would match with the rest of the hutch.

OK….so here she is in all her glory!

Not too shabby, right? PUN INTENDED.

I love how the white really pops against the black accent wall, and I really love the mix of open and closed storage…but now I need more pretty things! (You better believe the cupboards are already packed to the brim with a bunch of ugly stuff: I’m looking at you, slow cooker!)

It’s pretty nuts how just a few small tweaks can change something entirely. I am so pleased with how the flipped doors turned out…they just look so much cleaner.

I’m very happy I decided not to junk this hutch as it is perfect for the room and gives a lot more much needed storage. The dining room is thisclose to being finished and if I am being totally honest it is my favorite room in our house. Why? Because I didn’t rush it. I was slow and deliberate and only did things I love, rather than trying to get everything perfect in one weekend, and it’s paid off. I want to have a dinner party, like, now.

So what do you guys think? Were you a fan of the hutch the way it was or do you think this is an improvement? I always love hearing your feedback, so let me have it!