Salvaged wardrobe I considered for the kitchen remodel.
At this point I am waiting for THE THING.
When we started this house, I did not know about THE THING… I did not know that if you wait, giant fanciness will show up on Craigslist and enrich your life.
It makes me sad to think of all the fanciness I missed out on before I was enlightened… But all I can do is try to make up for it now.
At this point, I am a little frustrated that THE KITCHEN THING has not shown up yet, but I know it is all part of the process.
If you read my post about Pilar Guzman’s kitchen-of-magnificence, you know that I am enamored with the idea of an antique wardrobe repurposed into kitchen cabinetry.
If you read my subsequent post about finding/salvaging our own giant Victorian wardrobe, you know that INDEED, we ARE the people who know how to remove this from the wall.
NO PROBLEM.
This was part of a three-piece set that LOOKED really promising… I do not love/want painted wood, but the price and sheer amount of material was enough to make me go see it in person.
Plus, if we are painting, it gives us the flexibility of rebuilding/redesigning and adding new wood without worrying about (the impossibility of) matching stain/veneer/old wood patina.
But when we got there, the first wardrobe was really a piece of junk… (you KNOW that I will covet anything that is remotely fancy, and something has to be a real dud to not set off any kind of fancy-alarm.)
It was barely taller than I am and only slightly longer than 6 feet.
The Wardrobe Troll said– I do not think so. Boring. NEXT.
I did like the piece on the third floor – it was LARGE… I would’ve been happy to take it home and store it in the garage for all eternity, but Paul said we couldn’t do that.
I took a bunch of measurements, and spent the next few days trying to figure out how I could reconfigure the cupboards into an island… (Well, half an island– the half you see when you walk into the kitchen.) If we removed the upper and lower horizontal sections, we could maybe use them in another spot and turn the face of the cabinet into the right-height for an island.**
**Insert 57,000 other ideas that were similarly-vague-but-glorious-in-my-imagination-and-totally-ignoring-reality-of-crappy-condition-of-cabinetry.
Also, here I would like to say that it was FILTHY. To get to the third floor, we had to climb over a MOUNTAIN of construction debris.
If you scroll up to the second photo at the top of this post, you can see that seller-guy began gutting the attic after taking the picture for the Craigslist ad.
What you cannot see is that apparently he shared my approach to projects:
- begin with abandon.
- throw it in that there pile over yonder.
- be so focused on just one element that it isn’t until Paul comes home that someone puts a stop to the tornado of chaos.
Plus, this guy CLEARLY did not have a Paul. Sad for him in many ways, but also nice for him because he did not have anyone insisting that he must keep the area clear! Be orderly! REMOVE ALL NAILS from scrap-boards in some demented effort to safety-fy all of the trash… No matter that I have suggested a superior plan any number of times:
Put the nail-sticking-out-boards in the trash.
THEN DO NOT STEP IN THE TRASH.
When we left, my hands/pants/shoes were black from moving stuff to see what drawers were missing/climbing/wading through piles of plaster and lath, and Paul just stood there and talked to the guy about his plans for insulating the attic.
I said– can you give me a hand here? And Paul was like– I really want nothing to do with this idea but I know it is pointless to try to tell you all of the ways it will not look good… So I am just going to let you burn yourself out.
Looking at that photo above, all I can see are the nails sticking out of those boards. And even I –hater of tedious tasks– think that those should be picked up.
October 8, 2014 @ 10:14 am
What is wrong with people why would you remove this?
October 8, 2014 @ 10:21 am
I agree. I put an offer in a house just for a wardrobe like that. OK, not just for that. It would have been so much better than a boring closet that holds clothes properly.
October 8, 2014 @ 10:17 am
FYI, to make this even more complicated, I bought antique doors for my house, and the paint just melted off them with SoyGel. It only worked well on the ones that had previously been stained and had varnish under the paint. But on those, it worked so well that my plan to have doors and woodwork that sorta matched went out the window and instead I’ll have doors in whatever beat-up/fancy hybrid condition I’m able to get them into and leave ’em at that.
You might get sucked into doing the same. Photos of said doors here: http://chadscrookedhouse.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/strip-act/
October 8, 2014 @ 10:20 am
Poor sweet Paul. 🙂
October 8, 2014 @ 10:30 am
This was obviously not the one, everything happens the way it’s mean to be. The right one will come along and it will be fabulous and fancy in every way imaginable and make your kitchen the favorite room in your house, I just know it. I love your sense of humor, it helps to have one when doing a whole house remodel.
October 8, 2014 @ 10:32 am
ahhhhhhhh…I, like you, say leave the nails be and don’t step in the damn trash pile! lol My grandfather, who has been an AMAZING help, is the Paul. All nails are evil and must be quarantined from the construction area immediately. So much time removing nails that I could be destroying things…painting things…etc. I may have stepped on two nails while redoing out house, but guess what!!! They weren’t in wood, they were loose, unruly loner nails!
October 8, 2014 @ 10:34 am
perhaps you could just remove the doors and the front trim and have those added to custom cabinetry, making it the best of both worlds? To me, you’d have in-great shape boxes to hold stuff, that are squaring making everything easier, but the fancy fronts, and it would be easier to remove.
But then again, I’m in California where the oldest finds on Craigslist are 80’s brass lamps, so I have no idea what I’m talking about.
November 5, 2014 @ 11:09 am
Great suggestion!
October 8, 2014 @ 10:45 am
I live just south of Salado (approx 10 min away & Temple is 10 min North of Salado) and purchased an old country home that I am remodeling the kitchen currently & love the victorian era therefore everything in my home is pretty much more than 100 years old. In my LARGE kitchen (at least to me) I have put in an 1800’s victorian armoire/wardrobe that I inherited from my father (along with other beautiful antiquities) in the kitchen & this is my pantry as well as a storage for the more modern appliances. I looks like it belongs there among the victorian sewing machine & salvaged fretwork above the kitchen window. Love following you.
October 10, 2014 @ 3:28 pm
I’d love to see a picture of your kitchen Beverly.
October 8, 2014 @ 10:47 am
ooww, DANG! My heart skipped a beat when i saw the first picture of the piece with the mirror and all that beautiful trim……..piece of junk………..ouch! How disappointing that must’ve been! Will be looking forward to see if you are able to use the better one, it certainly looks impressive to be recycled. Hope you are able to find a way to salvage it and will let us know!
October 8, 2014 @ 10:52 am
Victoria – am I missing something in this post? Did you get any of this cabinetry? And I agree whole heartedly – the nails scare me, too.. I am accident prone and would most definitely get mauled by said nails and require a scary huge tetanus needle.
October 8, 2014 @ 10:58 am
No, I didn’t! I guess this is one of those times when I assume that you all know exactly what is going on in my head…
October 8, 2014 @ 11:02 am
My telepathy skills are clearly lacking – and me being a self-proclaimed long long sister of yours, too! Gah! Don’t disown me yet! (creepy or funny? or does it matter? LOL)
October 8, 2014 @ 1:08 pm
I’m glad someone else asked 🙂
October 8, 2014 @ 11:05 am
That one built-in cupboard looked promising in the picture, too bad it didn’t work out. The search is usually my favorite part but I can see how this might get a little frustrating. Still, your record proves that persistence pays off.
🙂
Karen
October 8, 2014 @ 11:40 am
I must admit I would have bought it anyway. It just speaks of another time and place where everything is about Elegance and Beauty. At the very least I could have stuck it in the Garage(if we still had a Garage) and stored deteriorating cans of paint in it to an unusable state. This is Chemistry I have perfected.
October 8, 2014 @ 11:44 am
hi victoria, i was just looking at your meet the kitchen post and i came up with what i think you will agree is a cheap and easy fix for the addition just make both the ceilings match from the kitchen to the patio wall.leave the french doors just as they are and just fix the bathroom ceiling or remove it all together(the bathroom). it will look a lot mor cohesive and it wont cost a lot. leave the orange paint.lol
October 8, 2014 @ 12:30 pm
Ummm . . . guess I have a talent for looking past flaws, because I would’ve probably tried to dismantle both cabinets & haul them home. While I actually prefer this style with paint, I can envision these units stripped & installed on either side of a window seat, similar to what I want built in our office/library. Eastlake cabinetry isn’t appropriate in our historic Italianate home & painted cabinets wouldn’t look right with the office’s dark walnut woodwork. A compromise would be to incorporate these units in our kitchen, where we plan to paint both the cabinets & (plain oak) woodwork.
October 8, 2014 @ 12:39 pm
This is probably a terrible faux pas to ask, but could you take those cabinets as inspiration and recreate their fanciness in your kitchen? It looks like lots of trim tricks could duplicate them. Then you could also do things like make the “cabinet” front actually a deep drawer which is a heck of a lot nicer for those low cabinets than laying on the floor to get things in the back. (unless you keep your floors cleaner than I do)
The idea of having giant cabinets like that in the kitchen make my heart go pitter patter. Mainly because it is a large space to store STUFF and that is a wonderful thing.
October 8, 2014 @ 1:12 pm
You might be able to stack them on top of each other and reconfigure the pilasters.
October 8, 2014 @ 2:02 pm
Reconfiguring each of the groups. IE: Remove the lower section with drawers by elimination then you may have great height wall cabinets. Possibly remove the upper section on the 1st group and use the lower section as wall cabinets, and then stack the shorter ones for areas like over the range and refrigerator. You can also create your own blind cabinet from a single door opening by building the blind corner with a single cabinet door. There maybe more potential for these pieces that you had originally considered. Just a thought.
October 8, 2014 @ 2:36 pm
Yes, I’d probably try to use those in the kitchen & repaint them white. I can also imagine a custom hood built of an antique headboard in a similar style—like the one I bought for $30 last year. 😉
October 8, 2014 @ 2:32 pm
Keep checking…the price may come down…and he’ll need to remove the debris when he insulates (now that he and Paul figured that out). I’d offer to store it for you for all of eternity in my garage (next to the farmhouse sink and cast iron tub) if you’d be willing to transport it to Illinois as we don’t have anything even remotely that fancy and I would surely be the envy of my neighborhood for even storing something of such magnificence. xo
October 8, 2014 @ 2:33 pm
I am adding on a kitchen to our house. The plan calls for a shallow floor to ceiling pantry. Those would be PERFECT. I am very jealous. I need one wall of pantry cabinets 10′ long, and another about 7′. (And no, I don’t think they have to match!) Those are exactly what I want and I didn’t even know it. Now I have to Pin this post to my Kitchen board on Pinterest. My husband will want to kill me. 🙂
October 8, 2014 @ 3:26 pm
Personally, I can envision these in a BATHROOM! As they are shallow, they would work perfectly for all the bottles of product we seem to collect!
October 8, 2014 @ 3:28 pm
Wait. Are you really over six feet tall? If so, then I have solved the mystery of the big fancy things. I am tall-ish. Love huge horses, large jewelry, oversized chairs etc. It’s a thing.
October 9, 2014 @ 10:24 am
I am 6 feet… Not over. Possibly giant fancy things just seem like normal-sized fancy things? Plus, normal-sized fancy things are always disappointing.
October 9, 2014 @ 10:29 am
I think you may be onto something. And I absolutely concur about normal sized fancy things…meh.