It Fits...It sits.

So, this is a follow up for the post about my newly acquired hutch. After posting pictures of it on my Facebook page, several folks inquired about where it was gonna end up in my house. Ya seeeeee.... my Belgian house isn't exactly spacious. In fact, it's pretty cluttered, especially since I've taken up the hobby of hoarding antiques & all things deemed "cool". 

I ran back over to Slegers yesterday to officially pick up my new wooden jewel. 

Of all the times I've been to that place, I've NEVER been asked to back it into the warehouse in order for them to load it. All the while, I thought I was going to have to pay them to deliver it to the house...but no, they assured me that it'd fit in the Xterra. Remember when I got that awesome old trunk? Well, THAT fit, so surely this thing would. 

After a little finagling, they got the hutch all loaded in and wrapped it up with some moving blankets, then proceeded to do intense boy scout style knots on the back door & bumper to insure that it wouldn't fall out on the way home. I could only imagine hitting a speed bump and that thing slide out and bust into a thousand pieces..oiy! Luckily, I made it home with it in one piece! Yay!

My original plan was to put it in my office since I *thought* I had room in there, but, I don't. I wasn't willing to take all my Venetian masks off the wall because, well, I like them there. I strolled around the house for a bit debating on where it could possibly go..and it ended up making it to the foyer...blocking our french doors, lol. We don't even use those doors, so it's no major loss to me, but it made me realize there's literally no room in the house for any more furniture (to Erics delight). 

Once we made sure all the shelves were stable, we went ahead and moved all my bakers, roasting pans and other various little pottery pieces into it. Ohhhh my gosh! I'm SO happy! I'm totally digging the little hooks that are on the top of the hutch so I can hang our soup cups to free up some space for my other polish mugs in the kitchen. 

As much as Eric likes to give me grief about my purchases, he actually ADMITTED that I did a good job with this find and really, really liked it. 

MAJOR VICTORY FOR ME! 

I'm elated that it's pretty similar to our dining table, so I'm so excited to see how it'll all look together whenever we end up moving into our new home . So for the time being, it'll stay in the foyer since we only have another month and a half till the movers come to take away all my precious treasures and relocate all of them to New Mexico. 

Le Sigh. 

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Wax on. Wax off.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been kinda scattered this week because I was running a ton of errands and I didn't really have a chance to sit down and write. So, here we go!

As stated in my last post, my favorite antique place opened back up after their month long hiatus! Ahhh!!! Happy Happy Joy Joy!! I think they giggled when they saw me walk in the door because it's like "Hey, the addict is back."...yuuup! I went about and did my usual stalking to see if I could find anything I couldn't live without. Given, there were quite a few things I fell inlove with, but Slegers definitely loved it more than me since I wasn't willing to shell out anywhere from 2,000-3,000 euros for a pretty hutch. I'm sure someone will come along that will REALLY love it and take it home. Once I was done trolling the vendor stalls, I started searching for my table since I needed to make arrangements for it's delivery. Ya know, I got this panicked feeling cause I couldn't find it ANYWHERE! It would've been my luck it was tagged wrong and sold to someone else on accident. After a good fifteen minutes of searching, I finally tracked down one of the employees to see if they knew where it was....they hid the table! I mean, REALLY hid it! They stuck it in a corner of the warehouse that was like a cubbyhole that you wouldn't find unless you were moving tarps around. I definitely had a sigh of relief since I've been eyeballing this table for a LONG time! The guy told me they moved it off the showroom floow because after I put the deposit down on it, several people came in after me and were wanting to buy it. SEE!! I had that tingling feeling that I needed to get it last month and I was right!! HA! So, I paid off the remaining balance and scheduled the delivery, in which they were able to drop it off the same day. Yippy!!!

 I was told it's carved oak (although it looks like walnut to me), dated around 1890 with Tudor style carving. After a little bit of research on my part, I ended up calling our insurance company to make sure this table received additional coverage when the time comes for us to move. I'll kill whoever wrecks this thing! Here's how the table looks in my kitchen :)

In the midst of talking to the employee's while I was still at the warehouse, I was asking them about potentially staining the table darker since the majority of our funiture is a darker walnut color. They gave me advice in terms of how to obtain the darker color I was seeking...and their method was surprising to me. I was told to use a towl and nylons when the time comes to take the stainer off of the wood. Really? I've never heard of that before. Then again, I never really took on the challenge of staining wood.

So, you take the towl, stick it in the nylon and use that to buff out the polish. When you first apply the polish, you paint in the same direction as the grain..they told me to leave it on anywhere from 2-3 days at a time to allow the color to really sink into the wood. Once you're ready to take it off, use the nylon to buff it out.

Now, as much as I wanted to immediately start working on the table...my brain told me to just test things out on the chair I had purchased. I mean, I got them for a very reasonable price and I'd rather use those as guinea pigs than my table. Let's face it..if I screwed that table up, I might as well shoot myself. I really liked these chairs since they're very sturdy and actually go with the table rather well..the only thing that's wrong with them is you can tell they've been sunbleached by their prior owner. So, I figured a little TLC and elbow grease can restore some color to 'em.

Tell ya what...staining furniture is for the birds! I didn't think it was THAT involved! I painted the stain on and let it soak in for a few days, then tried buffing it out. It's like trying to buff grease! It just kept smearing everywhere! I literally had to work on the chair for about 10 minutes, take a break, come back and start hammering away on it again..so on and so forth. I finally managed to get all the stainer off of it then sealed it up with a conditioner / polish. Now, let's see if you can tell which one went through the staining process:

Honestly, can you tell which one was worked on?? I'm interested in peoples feedback..cause to be blunt, if ya'll can't tell which one is which, then there's a part of me that doesn't wanna deal with staining the other three chairs, lol.

In addition to staining the chair, I worked on my trogs since some of them definitely needed some staining TLC. There was one I bought and when I washed it, ALL of the color washed out of it! Talk about a shocker! It went from a pretty walnut color, to gray. Sad! So, here's a pic of the color difference with the stainer on it now verses how it looked before:

So yeah...it's definitely time consuming when it comes to staining and polishing old furniture. I'll most likely finish the rest of the chairs, but I'll definitely be taking my time with them..at least for the next few days since I burned the crap out of my hand last night and it's now all red, angry, swollen and blistering. I was pouring out boiling water cause the noodles I was cooking were ready..lost my grip on the strainer and a good couple of quarts spilled all over my hand. Talk about misery!! Bleh!!

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YIPPY YIPPY YIPPYYYYY!!!!

Ahhhh!!! I'm so excited right now!!!

As some of you know, I stalk the local antique warehouse called Slegers. Over time, I've scored some pretty cool stuff like trogs, a nice scale and even a spiffy lookin' coffee grinder. One of my main missions before we leave Belgium is to get a nice Belgian table. Their quality when it comes to furniture is amazing and I rather invest my money into antique stuff verses some modern day pieces (MAJOR difference in weight and sturdiness).

Well, there's this table I've been eyeballing for a while now. Since..hmmm..let's say December. A friend of mine ended up buying the larger version of the one I wanted because she got a killer deal (table, buffet AND hutch!). Here's a pic from her Facebook I acquired:

As much as I loved her set, it'd NEVER fit in our current house. Never, lol. So, I kept my eye on the table I was wanting. Thing is, it was in a set with a MASSIVE buffet and matching hutch. But, those two pieces didn't match the table..so that always made me wonder why they were wanting to sell it as a set.  Don't get me wrong, they're beautiful...but ridiculously large and would probably kill our weight allowance when it's time to move again. I found out that the price for the entire set was 1,400€ (aghhh, it hurts!) so I knew that wasn't gonna happen considering that converts to $2,005. Eeeek.

About a week ago, Eric finally had a day off in the week (that's a RARITY!) so I took him over to the warehouse to show him the table. He even liked it! Then again, I'm not surprised  since he and I are a lot alike when it comes to style. We both love dark walnut wood :) I noticed the table was set several aisles away from the buffet and hutch, so after doing some investigating, it turns out that they're selling the table separately because they realized it didn't match the rest of the set. YIPPY!

They were wanting 800€ for the table ($1,145)..it was do-able, but Eric really hated the chairs. REALLY hated them. They're very sturdy and rather heavy (about 8lbs a piece, at least), but it'd be kind of a pain to get them reupholstered. In all honesty, I wouldn't want to buy the chairs to just have them gutted and redone....not worth shelling out more money in the long run. So, we kinda went back and forth on it and decided we'd "see" if it was available once we got back from our Venice vacation.

For some reason, I had a feeling I needed to go over to Slegers today. I dunno how to explain it, but it was like a twitch saying "You NEED to go. Now.".... I tossed John in the Xterra and we rolled over there to check the table out and it had moved. My heart sank! I walked all around the showroom floor and I finally found it. Apparently someone had taken a look at it earlier and debated on whether or not they wanted it (sound familiar!?).. they hadn't put any money down on it, so it was still up for grabs. I managed to snag one of the employee's and asked him about it and we haggled back and forth. Since Eric and I were not fans of the chairs, I made it clear that I didn't want them with the table, so after some thought.. the guy knocked 150€ ($215) off of it for me. DONE DEAL! Sure, someone else had probably taken the time to go have lunch to think it over and come back..but I've been wanting this for a while! I ran down to the ATM and got the money for the deposit (we'll be picking it up after our Venice trip). The guy must've thought I was a nut because I was so happy about buying it, lol. The final price came to 650€ ($930) which really isn't all that bad considering the table is 100+ years old and in fabulous shape!

The pattern on the table top:

I love love love the detailed carving around the sides of the table as well as the legs!

The best part is that the table extends! When its extensions aren't pulled out, it's 55 inches long, and with the extensions it's 102 inches. Perfect if we want it for a regular dinner table, or if we wanna use it when we have additional company over! I think the coolest part is that the leafs are built into the table so you don't have to worry about storing them somewhere else in your house. If you wanna have more table space, you just pull the sides out and they slide out from underneath the main table top surface.

All I gotta do now is pick up some dark wood wax to spruce it up a lil bit and we're good to go! Luckily, they also sell that there for 5€ a container, so I'll make sure to snag some when we go back to finish up the purchase & arrange the delivery :)

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