The Hubs and I are fans of antiques, and of course I love primitives and primitive home decor. When we find or get something that is antique and primitive, that is a true treasure. And if something used to belong to one of our grandparents...that's priceless. And such is the case with our Prim Hoosier Cabinet...well, the top of it anyway.
When my husband's grandmother died in 1999, while we were cleaning out her garage we found part of this old Hoosier cabinet. It was missing its bottom half, unfortunately, and it was covered in layer upon layer of paint. It was almost unrecognizable as a Hoosier, in fact, and the door panels for the two doors on the right were missing. But we loved it anyway and decided that a restoration was in order.
My in-laws helped to strip the layers of paint, which is never an easy task. And for the most part it was in decent shape underneath--although the wood on the back of the wide open area at the bottom was fairly rotten and had to be replaced. We knew we were going to stain the wood to match our kitchen, as we both hate painted wood and much prefer stain since it brings out wood's natural beauty. But that back part was never going to look the same stained as the rest of the cabinet, so we decided to paint just that part to match our kitchen walls, and the Hubs stained the rest.
The missing cabinet door panels were another issue, but I quickly decided on a creative solution: stained glass. Luckily, I do stained glass and created a glass panel for each of the cabinet doors. I love how they turned out, and I think they really compliment the Hoosier.
And of course the biggest concern was that entire missing bottom half of the Hoosier. What to do? Initially, we hung it on one of the walls in the eating area of our kitchen. But we remodeled last year and removed that wall, so the cabinet had to move. And since I didn't want it back on a wall, we went antiquing and found a nice old primitive-looking table to set the cabinet on. It's not as nice as a real Hoosier bottom would be, but it works.
This next photo just shows some goodies I have on top of the Hoosier...the bunny is from a prim ornie swap, and I just love him! The green pot is one I made myself in college on the potter's wheel. The cream-colored ceramic vase was made by a potter friend of mine. I also have a little prim pip berry willow tree there and an old stitchery I found at a garage sale years ago that reads, Home Sweet Home. There are some other items up there too, not visible on the photo.
I keep my cookbooks in the Hoosier, many of which belonged to my grandmother and great grandmother. Seems fitting that this Hoosier has become a tangible memory of both my husband's and my grandmothers. And hopefully one day it will sit in my granddaughter's kitchen...and remind her of me.
