PHASE 2: The Blue Cabinet

I am looking for my blue cabinet. Like this:

  
Weary, chipped,..... and so full of character.

I lived with this one for a vacation week in Mendocino last summer. As you see, the rest of the kitchen is modern, Danish clean, and obviously a choice owner Ron made to update what is essentially an1880's shanty.

Mendo's Garden Cottage

But this playful piece matches nothing else in the sleek creme and white kitchen. It just has to have a story around it. But I didn't want to ask Ron, in case it wasn't as provocative as my own musings about Mendo's past.





I know just where I want my cabinet to go in my kitchen. Here in that little recessed niche over the housemate fridge:

I love how the rich color says, "Look at me! Aren't I special?" More than that, in my kitchen it will say, "Loni lives here, and this gives you a hint about who she is." I see mine as green. Glass doors would be fun, but I'll take the character that I find and let it create its own story.

Since all my Phase 2 drawings are finally done and ready for Tim, I went shopping at Urban Ore, our local salvage recycling yard, or as they call it their Eco-Park.  No luck. But I'm still hoping to find other opportunities and places where I might find it. I could buy an inexpensive IKEA 30"x24" cabinet, distress, and antique it with my table milk paint. Won't have the period piece feel quite, so I'm holding out. It's an on-going hunt that I am enjoying between other tasks, and hopefully another weekend project that will have its own resonant feeling of putting myself into my house, as this Christmas table project did.



And I will write more about The Garden Cottage too. It's an example that can teach us how to use groups of buildings to achieve an amazing, and wonderfully intimate sense of "home." Ron has done many creative things to make the place unique and welcoming. It's an inspiring case study with many lessons.