Green Handles

Sometimes I just have to show you things I love.

Kitchen utensils of the past (circa 1920's-40's) were often wooden and often red.  On rarer occasions, they were green.  I love and collect both colors.  Here is my jar of the red-handled utensils.

This particular green-and-black-handled potato masher is dumpster bounty.  Can you believe that?   Found in the dumpster.  Like it was trash or something!  What's wrong with some people?  Geez!

The newest arrival!

It fits right in with it's new family:  my collection of green-handled utensils, mostly provided to me as sweet gifts from that cute boy I married who knows I love them (and him!).

I particularly like the scoop with the yellow stripe and the delicate icing spreader.

 

Photographed here on a trip to my kitchen.

They all live in their vintage jar in my dining room where I keep all things green.  But which I can't photograph well at the moment because that's also where I currently keep all things headed to the flea market booth!  But here's kind of a shot of them in their natural habitat (I had to climb over the dining table and a bunch of junk to get this shot so appreciate the great lengths I go to for blogging excellence -- ok, mediocrity!).  They live with my mother's bamboo tray, my mother's green pot that she grew a glorious giant red amaryllis in every Christmas, and my favorite vintage alarm clock.

Aren't egg-beaters just dinosaurs now?

It's always fun to find a green handle in the random kitchen utensil bin at a thrift store for a dollar or less.  It doesn't happen often but every once in awhile...

The Saga of the Dining Table

I woke up Saturday morning with the delightful prospect of having an entire three day Labor Day weekend ahead of me (and no one else awake yet to spoil it by wanting something from me).  I lay in bed as the pale sunlight started to intensify outside the bedroom windows and wondered what to start my day with. 

I threw some shorts on under the t-shirt I had slept in (the best formula I've found yet for getting things done), made a cup of coffee, and wandered out to the front porch in the searching daze of a creative fanatic without a project.  I kept feeling that I needed a focus but I couldn't figure out what that focus was going to be.

I can't remember now what I went to retrieve from my car but, when I opened the back hatch, there it was!  My focus.  The weekend project that sleep had erased from my brain. 

I bought this table at the flea market for $22.50 (with tax: $24.58).  It had sat there for quite awhile and had been marked down repeatedly.  I knew I had free black paint in my project room.  I knew I could dress it up!

Here it is right-side-up:

The finish was so ugly it looked like the table had a laminate top. But it was solid wood.

And here is a detailing of the water damage on the top surface.  It has these blemish lines every five inches down the entire length of the surface.

I posed my table-painting plans on Facebook and was quite shocked to stir up a few wood-lovers who were horrified that I would paint over wood and who were very humanitarianly(wooditarianly?)-concerned for the "distress" I was putting the poor table through. 

Oh PLEASE!  It's called French Country.  And people pay extra for it! 

I adore painted furniture and I don't care what anyone thinks about me painting this table (as long as someone is willing to pay for it in the end -- of which I am confident -- worst case scenario: I might have to keep it which is very tempting to start with!).  I am constantly dragging something out to the front yard to paint and I have done so for time that can now be counted in decades and I have never once regretted it -- even when I was worried that I was making a mistake. 

I sanded the top and painted the table with two coats of glorious inky black paint called "Black Kettle".

I've been needing to learn how to distress furniture for awhile now.  This table taught me how!  It goes so contrary to instinct to take sand paper to something you've just tried so hard to get perfectly painted.  But I dove in and sanded away (maybe not as much as other people do when distressing but I may get carried away with it as I do it more and more)!

This photo was taken before I sanded that lower edge of the table top.

These photos don't really capture it but here's a look at the finished product.  I had to tell the girls "no" to eating dinner at this table in the front yard out of fear of mishaps!  THEY like it!

The table is now listed on Craigslist for $225.  Why not fish high?