The More Beat Up, The Better

Here's a little project I did recently.  

If you read this blog you probably know that I have lots and lots of books.  In fact, I kind of have them all over my house.  Books are kind of like little treasures that I stash wherever I have empty space.

My husband kind of, sort of has a habit of bringing home antique-y type things from time to time.  So the two obsessions passions kind of intersect occasionally.


One of the places I have been stashing some books used to look like this:

I love its very primitive style and the beat up surfaces that it has.  I'm pretty sure my mom thinks I'm crazy for liking beat up old stuff but it is what it is.

This piece sits upstairs in my middle dormer "nook" where I have a cozy chair, a lamp and a lovely window to sit near while I read.  As I viewed it one day while descending the stairs, I realized that the old cabinet kind of disappears behind our cherry stained railings.  

So I went down to the basement and found some old, dark navy paint that we used in our youngest son's room and started playing with it.  I added enough white paint to change it to a kind of "denim" color and then turned it into chalk paint with plaster of paris.

Now it looks like this:

Craig hauled it upstairs before I had a chance to put a finish on it so I'll have to do that somewhere down the road.  

In the meantime, it caused me to sort out the books that I had in it and bring down the ones that looked interesting again to my "office library" in my laundry room.

I like how it looks.