Daily Archives: March 31, 2010

Welcome to our home you beautiful beast.

The process of getting it here had me doubting my sanity.  I drove quite some distance to pick it up, and worried the whole way there that it would overload my truck, or that some other major calamity would occur.  Nothing happened.  Once I got home with it, though, I was confronted with a new problem…it was a piece of junk: much nastier and rustier than the pics of it had suggested.  Disappointed, but determined to restore it, I carried on…  and now that it’s finished and in it’s final resting place,  I’m really damn happy that I put in the hours to bring it back to life.  I would do it all over and over again.  I really love it.

I mentioned in a previous post that bringing the top back to life was going to take some serious work, and it did.  Then Linsi had a good look at the black underside after I cleaned it up, and we decided to make it the new “top”.  The base was a nice enough industrial gray, but it was rusty in places, and I wanted a little color.  The paint is a Greenguard certified, low v.o.c.  lacquer from Dunn Edwards, called Opaline.   I love it with the original orange number tags.  The locker paint was chosen with a black top in mind, but it looks great with the maple too (you can see a peek of the amber underside in the first pic).

Its overall size is 65″w x 55″d x 33″h, and it weighs a LOT.  Those dimensions mean that a: it barely fits in our kitchen, and b: something may have to be done to raise it to counter height (35″-36″), so a normal stool will fit comfortably under it.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some that are a little short.

The lock has been on it since I first picked it up.  There may be a million dollars inside, or maybe some toxic waste.

It stays, though, because it’s a perfect piece of jewelery.

The top looks beat in this pic, but it is nicely “beat-up” in person.

Angle iron is helping  keep the top intact.  Notice the (beautiful) decades of abuse.

*Thanks and apologies go to our neighbor, Mitch, who offered to help, then had a genuine look of regret in his eyes when he first supported the full weight of the butcher block  top.

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