my first real antique furniture purchase!

I’ve been looking for a hutch/cabinet for our kitchen for a while now. Since we moved here we’ve had a rickety Ikea shelf sitting sitting in the space between our kitchen and living room– holding cookbooks and my vintage pyrex bowls. We have other vintage dishes I would have loved to display… but, see, we have this adorable, lovable, but horribly misbehaved cat, Hermione. Despite the fact we have a squirt bottle just to keep her from doing bad things, she has no qualms about jumping up on a shelf and pushing something breakable off onto the. Last week it was a lovely pottery bowl one of my best friends made. Yes, Hermione might look sweet and innocent– but don’t be deceived!

With a birthday coming up, and a nice tax refund in the bank, Sunday morning we went to a few furniture stores looking for some kind of hutch or cabinet that we could use for storage and to display all the great dishes we currently have hidden away from Hermione’s reach. The problem is that nither of us like modern/new furniture. Either it is ugly (and there are some ugly hutches out there) or it is cheaply made. We both grew up with solid, good quality antiques, and what I really wanted was an antique hoosier-type cabinet (someday I want a completely vintage kitchen). Of course, antique hoosier cabinets go for like $1200+.

We came home from shopping and I checked craigslist. Just minutes earlier someone  listed an antique hoosier cabinet– for only $475! And it was a particularly gorgeous one– with etched glass doors (usually they’re solid wood). I called the seller and she said she had received a bunch of calls, so she would sell it to the first person who showed up and gave her a check. We drove frantically to a town south of Madison, imagining that every person who passed us was going to get there first and buy the hoosier out from under us.

Fortunately we got there first. The people selling it had other wonderful antique furniture and they obviously new antiques and took wonderful care of everything they had. The cabinet was in perfect condition– an actual Hoosier brand– and we bought it for less than they were asking. And it somehow fit in our volvo (everything fits in a volvo)!

So here she is, our very first piece of antique furniture. She’s in great condition and still has the cool old flour sifter, baking racks in the base, and a tin bread box in the door. I can’t believe how perfect it looks in our apartment filled with my vintage dishes. We just love it. I can’t stop looking at it. And Hermione? Her plans to break our stuff are totally foiled. She’s tried to open the cabinets and can’t! Ha!