Bob refinished it, keeping the original pulls and stuff, after cleaning them and giving them a fresh coat of paint. He used a stain very close to the original color my Dad used and when it was done, it was beautiful.
We recently moved the unit to the dining room, but when we did, we had to move some of the other furniture around. We moved the china cabinet to the wall with the window and had to take a couple of pictures down off the wall. We put the unit in the room, alongside the hutch my Dad built for us years ago. Together, they look beautiful.
The only thing was that when we moved the unit in, we had to take several things off the walls and didn't have a wall left to hang them back up. In addition to that, we have a little granddaughter now, Norah, who was born in April. We need to get a child's gate for the stairs, but we also had to do something about the wobbly railing near the stairs.
Bob decided to take the railing out and put up a wall. It would solve both problems. It would eliminate the danger near the stairs for Norah and it would give us a place to hang our now homeless paintings, teacup collection and spoon collection.
He didn't use drywall, just put up a plywood wall. It went up in a day. He primed it then painted it. Now, we need to finish painting the rest of the dining room. Once it's done, the room will look fantastic. We took the tired old curtains down and our new paint color will go well with the new overall color scheme in the house----browns, beiges and some blues. The wall is very narrow--no wider than the railing, so we didn't lose any space. It took away some openess, but it works to serve our purposes. Now we can hang up our stuff in the dining room and we have wall space on the other side for pictures of our little granddaughter!!
So, without further delay, here are some pictures of this project. I've included a picture of the newly refinished wall unit and then a series of pictures of the railing being taken out and the new wall going up.
The refinished wall unit, side by side with the hutch my Dad built for us years ago. Dad built this wall unit and Bob refinished it after we brought it down from the house in Michigan.
Bob puts up the new wall in the dining room:
The "before" shot - what the room looked like before the wall went up.
Bob removing the railing
the wall starts going in
this side is a little tricky
the wall is up
primed and then painted - the rest of the room will be painted this color --as well as down the hall, the kitchen and down the stairs
