Knock, Knock

Oh, door, whatever shall we do with you?

It all started with a door.  Somehow, in the course of renovations, we ended up with an extra door.  I can't remember where it came from now, but there it was - a lonely door just crying for someone to come do something with it.  It was a rather plain door and lacking its own doorway.  Thank goodness for pinterest because apparently a door is not just a door and using doors in doorways is just rather passé, don't you know.

So the woodworker decided to make a entry bench out of it and promptly added a box to the bottom and a shelf to the top, never mind that we didn't really have an entryway to put it in.  The closest we had was the short hallway in the Dogwood Room, so there it would go.  I painted it a soft green first, then did a second coat in cream and sanded the whole thing down to distress it properly.

Since it would go in the Dogwood Room and the face of the door was just a big blank space and asking for some decoration (does your furniture not speak to you?), I added an approximation of a branch of dogwood blossoms.  Our dogwoods bloom green and white, but many bloom with pink, so I did these with pink so they would show up better.  It also had the unfortunate consequence of making them look a little like cherry blossoms, but they are *clearly* not as cherry blossoms have five petals and dogwoods have four.  Clearly.

The green coat, painted on the porch because it kept raining and, apparently, rain and paint don't mix.

The cream coat, painted inside because paint and blowing rain mix even less well. Or perhaps too well. No telling.

Hand painted cherry-er dogwood blossoms

Of course, we put the entry bench up in the Dogwood Room and it looked a little lonely.  The woodworker also started making noise about an armoire.  There is, for the record, a perfectly nice cedar lined closet in the Dogwood Room but it is, in all fairness, a very large walk in closet for overnight guests and the doorway is slightly low.  As in, my generously measured 5 feet and 6 1/2 inches barely clears the top of the doorway.  Okay, so fine, lets get the entryway door bench some company, but we need another door.  Yes, our environmentally conscious reusing of a door has now necessitated us purchasing a new door.

One second hand shop later, we were the proud owners of a new old door to be cut in half and turned into armoire doors.  Too bad the door we purchased happened to be hollow.  Okay, so several tedious hours of rebuilding said door later, and we had the armoire doors ready to go, followed a few days later by the rest of the armoire.

Fully constructed armoire and reconstructed doors, ready for paint.

The inside of the armoire was painted light green and the outside green overlaid with cream

The infamous door, painted green then overlaid with cream and distressed with a sander

Fully painted, it was time to move the whole thing upstairs.  Did I mention that it ended up being quite large?  And the stairway is not?  It was easy really.  It was so large it kept getting stuck, so there was no danger of dropping it, at least, and only minor disassembly and mild cuss words were required.  At last, it was wrestled into place and after a bit of fussing and adjusting, it does look quite nice, we think.

Welcome to the Dogwood Room