A hoosier of my very own.

Maybe you remember way back when I dearly desired a hoosier cabinet for a coffee station in the kitchen. But they’re kind of hard to find and kind of expensive so I settled for a $30 hutch off of Facebook marketplace that I painted blue. (If you care to have a visual, click here.)

Wellllllllll, one of Dave’s best pinball buddies from Austin came to visit in early January. I think I was in the process of redoing the hutch at the time and mentioned that I dreamed of a hoosier but found this instead. He said something to tune of “My wife has a hoosier cabinet in her sewing room. You could have it.” (His wife was totally cool with it. She wanted shelves for storage instead.)

Oh, my. Oh, my. OH, MY!

The one condition was that Dave had to pick it up in Austin and do a little pinball work for his friend in exchange. Boom. Done. Well, almost done. Then Covid hit and visits to Austin were ill-advised until just a few weeks ago. Dave had fun with his pinball friends and brought back a hoosier, complete with flour sifter and metal pie drawer. Here is what it looked like upon arrival (minus enamel top  and a door I’d already taken off) –

I took it apart and sanded, sanded, sanded; cleaned and finally painted. Dave helped me fix the water damage that was at the bottom. I put it back together, fixed the roll top cover with my book arts skills, ordered a few new drawer pulls, and – wait for it – we have an office!

Yup. An office. Turns out it was too deep to replace our coffee hutch in the kitchen but no fear, it works *perfectly* as our office space. It’s soo much more functional than our “office” space was before. It’s quite perfect – a space for the printer, a counter to address envelopes, and plenty of “office” storage for stamps, cards, files, and the like.

About the color: I painted it white. I know. I really wanted to paint it bright kelly green or orange or something crazy but held back. It seemed to make most practical sense to be boring. And, yes, I admit, classic. I still plan to put colorful wallpaper of some sort behind the printer/roll top door. It needs some funk.