Furniture Project #1: Hutch

I've finished a furniture project!!  Yay!!  Be super happy for me!  But seriously, please be super excited, because this project has taken me for a RIDE.  

Here is the before picture.  It's a huge piece, and extremely well made, so when Kristoffer's mom asked if I wanted it, I jumped all over it!  I needed a place for my nice serving ware anyway, and this piece was perfect.  I didn't want to keep the brown, it's such a huge piece, and the brown was a little overwhelming, so I wanted to paint it white and distress it, to match the dining room table, since they would be sharing a space anyway.

Here is is before I took it inside.  We managed upon a dolly in our move to this house, and boy has it been useful!  I could dolly this huge hutch in and out of the garage to my painting station all by myself with it.

 I wouldn't even let my husband change out of his work clothes last night after he got home at 11pm before I made him help me haul it inside.

 And this morning after I loaded it up!  It's so pretty!  And that space is precisely made to have a hutch living there.

 This is the dining room table I finished a few months ago that I copied to match the hutch to.  I found the same shade of creamy white, and the same undertone shade of spruce that was hiding underneath, and I think I did pretty well!

I was able to do this project (the hutch) with the paint sprayer I got for Mother's Day, and I'll admit, the paint sprayer and I were off to a really rocky start.  As in, I'm-ready-to-smash-you-into-the-pavement, type of a rocky start.  I had huge issues with the piston clogging and getting stuck, and leaking paint and chunky paint balls.  It was a nightmare.  But somehow, after hours of cleaning and lubing and getting to know the paint sprayer waaay closer than I ever thought possible, it worked.  

It was a miracle really.  I gave the sprayer a nice long bath in hot water, let it air dray, lubed that puppy up like there was no tomorrow, gave it a test spray with hot water, watered down my primer, and she purred like a kitten for me.  I was shocked.  The whole time my heart was racing, as I waited for the familiar sound of hammering inside the sprayer that would tell me the piston had seized up.  But no!  In fact, the battery died before the piston clogged.  I was so happy!  I was able to prime the whole thing so  could brush it with 'shaded spruce' as an undercoat the next day.  Then I sprayed my final coat of creamy white, let it dry and broke out the sander to distress it.

The handles I didn't touch and just put them back on as they were, and I think they look smashing.  So happy to finally be making progress.  I've actually sprayed 3 of my 4 kitchen chairs today and they are drying in the garage, so I'll post pictures of them soon.  We're plugging along over here!