Wooden Boxes

While I'm on the subject of boxes (see last post), check out these antique beauties.

Both the Hubby and I love old boxes. I admit, the Hubby is a little more enamoured with them than I am, but I really love these two!


The paint on this trunk is just beautiful! I love the faded green.

It has this great old calendar illustration decoupaged to the top, but....

We covered it with this other fabulous old box. Look at the dovetailed sides. Aren't they exquisite? We picked this up at a little antique store shortly after we were married...it's lived many places with us and served us well.

I topped both boxes off with this basket of seasonal children's books. I adore children's books and (more importantly) I have a houseful of children. But since I can't stand kid clutter, I wanted the books to be accessible to the kiddos while they are in the living room, but I didn't want them (the books not the kiddos) to be a focal point. We use the boxes for extra storage (DVDs, games etc.) and they look like a kind of sculptural furniture piece. Do you have any creative solutions for extra storage?



On a side note, I have had some people asking about how we painted our cabinets. So I thought I'd take a minute and give y'all a quick tutorial (the Hubby should really be the one to do this but y'all are stuck with me. )

The first thing we did was remove all the doors. Yup, all of them. Then the Hubby used his trusty palm sander to sand them down. And boy did he sand. For a looooooong time. I got the "fun" job of using sandpaper to sand the cabinets themselves. Then we used a primer. The primer is really important for the paint to adhere well, and to avoid chips. (We painted both sides of each door. At first, I thought it was a waste of time, but the Hubby insisted. I'm glad he did because when I open the cupboards they look like they are meant to be cream...not like they are painted.) We topped them off with two coats of cream paint. Yes, even though we used primer, we still used two coats of paint. We used an eggshell finish because we wanted more of a matte finish, but still wanted the paint to wipe clean (and it cleans wonderfully...trust me...it's had a workout!) Hope this helps all you who are looking to paint your cupboards...it's a lot of work...it is...I won't lie...but it's worth it!