Being a furniture re-doer, lots of people give me their cast-offs. This is both a blessing and a curse. Some pieces have great bones, and really just need a cosmetic overhaul. Those are the ones I love to get! Other pieces are made of questionable materials, or have so much damage or such a bad design that I am left scratching my head trying to come up with a solution to save it. I want to save them all, but sometimes, it’s just not possible. Almost the case with this crusty desk-top hutch, but then it got lucky with a second life as this amazing coffee station!
From the beginning of my brainstorming, I thought this hutch would be best flipped upside down, with a wood top added. I couldn’t quite figure out how to raise the height a little to make it more functional, so I went online looking for ideas. That’s when I thought of adding casters, and making it a coffee station. And that’s also when I started to get excited about this project. I couldn’t wait to see what it would become!
But first….there was a lot of re-working to do. I thought it would just be a matter of flipping the drawers over, adding the casters, and voila! But the drawers had a center rail that they slid on, and those couldn’t be at the top. So rather than trying to remove the rails without damaging them, we thought we’d remove that whole section with the drawers and flip it over. But then we got that far, and there were more challenges with lining up openings and re-attaching things. All I can really tell you is that my husband broke the whole thing down and re-built it. So check for rails, and preferably avoid them, so you can DIY a project like this more easily.
Once the re-construction was done, I sanded lightly and wiped it down. I painted it with 2 coats of Dixie Belle chalk mineral paint in Sand Bar. For the top, I purchased a piece of pine from Home Depot, and had it cut to size. A combination of stains on the raw wood created this beautiful barnwood look. First was Voodoo Gel Stain in the color Up in Smoke, followed by the color Tobacco Road. These come in squirt bottles, so I just applied the 2 colors in different areas and spread them out with a shop towel. I didn’t wait for it to dry, I just let them mix together and create a lot of color variations. Then I sealed it with Clear Coat in Flat. The copper knobs are from D Lawless Hardware.
Here are the products I used on this project:
- Hutch (gifted)
- Sand Bar
- Voodoo Gel Stain Up in Smoke
- Voodoo Gel Stain Tobacco Road
- Clear Coat in Flat
- Pine wood top (Home Depot)
- Casters
- Copper knobs (similar)
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