A little lighter, a little brighter

This is the story of a cabinet.  A really cool, really antique, really DARK china cabinet.

I am a person with a need for a china cabinet (or two, or three) wherever I am.  Why?  Because I LOVE vintage glass, old dishes and anything I can stick plants or candles in.  Really, I just love beautiful glassware, and I've accumulated quite a collection.  (Which was all collected inexpensively, but all my pieces are precious to me.)

The House of Goodwill may be a rental property (or a guest house, as I like to think of it), but it still required a china cabinet for me to keep some vases in.  I love having fresh flowers around.

So anyway, when I was in the beginning stage of collecting furniture for the house, I went somewhere to buy a bed when the couple selling it offered us a whole bunch of furniture they were getting rid of either extremely cheaply or for free.  (It was a newlywed couple who had both been divorced and were combining households, therefore they had all kinds of stuff between them they no longer needed or wanted at their new home.)

We ended up talking lots of free stuff from their leftovers, including a really cool antique china cabinet they let us have for $30.  What's so cool about it?  Well, for one thing, it's old enough that it was built without nails.  That's cool!

What I really wanted at The House of Goodwill was a china cabinet that was only table height.  The only place there was really room to put one was in the hallway entrance, and I wanted to hang a mirror over it.

But I wasn't sure if I'd find what I was looking for, this was an amazing antique, and I figured at $30 I could afford to buy it and switch it out later for what I hoped to find at no great loss.

I never did find the table height cabinet (still keeping my eyes out though), so the antique cabinet it is.

The only problem (aside from it's height)?  It's dark!  My whole goal working on the house was to try to add light with everything: the wall paint, the molding color, the linens, the furniture, etc.  Eliminating dark wood was the plan.  And this cabinet is dark.

I've painted and refinished tons of furniture.  But I'm one of the old school antique lovers who can never bring themselves to paint an antique.  My reason?  Well, aside from lowering the value, as a history lover, I understand that once something is gone, it's gone.  The house that's torn down - or modernized - the antique that's painted...these things can never be brought back again, and doing these things slowly erases history.  I figure if you don't like a beautiful antique the way it is, sell it to someone who appreciates it and buy a new one.  Why not?

It kills me to see really beautiful antiques updated to something trendy that the person who changed it is going to be sick of it again ten years down the road.

I do have exceptions.  Sometimes antiques or vintage pieces are so far gone the value has already been stripped, or they're extremely common and inexpensive, or they've been damaged and need to be redone.  Everything I've ever redone has fallen into one of these categories.

And to be fair, I did just spend two years painting a 1970's house full of dark walnut stained molding white.  (Well, the molding is now white.)  The dark molding was definitely a 1970's style.  And I wanted to keep the style of the house to it's time period...but I just couldn't handle the dark.

So back to the cabinet.  Not only is the $30 cool cabinet very dark, but the glass doors have a lattice trim, blocking the view of the cabinet's contents.  So not only do my glass pieces get swallowed up by the dark wood, they are also covered by the trim.  And to really appreciate a beautiful piece of glass, it needs to be seen in the light.

This is a cabinet that would be perfect if it could be located right near a window, with a lot of natural light.  But there was no such spot at The House of Goodwill.  And I just couldn't bring myself to paint it.  So...after my son and I successfully wallpapered the dark oak bookcase in his room with peel-and-stick wallpaper from Wal-Mart, I thought about trying it on the china cabinet.  Supposedly, this paper can be peeled off at any time with altering or damaging the the wood if desired.  It seemed like the only option.

This was hard!

When we wallpapered the oak bookcase in my son's room (which was also hard to do!), at least the back of the bookcase was a flat surface.  But this antique cabinet's back was made up of individual boards, with tiny cracks between them.  Also, these shelves were built in and not removable, unlike the oak bookcase.  So it was a bit more challenging.  Still, we got it done in two hours or so.

You know I always forget to take my before pics (!) but here is a pic after we got one section done, to give you an idea of how it looked at first:

Not a HUGE difference, but the light-colored wallpaper did help lighten the cabinet up a bit.

These gorgeous duck vases deserved a spotlight!

And here is the cabinet, after we got it done:

There it is!

I did love how it came out.

I'm sold on the peel-and-stick wallpaper now for cabinet and shelf backs!

It was about $25 for the roll.

So the total paid for this cabinet was $55.

I'd love to add a light in the future and put it on a timer.  The problem is (as I mentioned) the shelves are built in.  They also extend all the way to the door, so if I were to add a light at the top, it would illuminate the top shelf only.  Still thinking on how I might be able to do that...

And, unlike the last wallpaper project (that the husband NEVER NOTICED)...this time the husband was present when the wallpaper was installed.  He therefore not only appreciated the effort that went into it, he also knew it did not come that way.  He even took pictures of the process, adding to his husband scorecard and not deleting from his current high score.  (For now anyway.)  It was a peaceful evening and The House of Goodwill was able to live up to it's moniker.

So much for the quick post I was going to scribble off...but it WAS a great story about an antique cabinet, was it not?