Hoosier Cabinet

Hoosier kitchen cabinets were popular in the early 1900's. The Hoosier cabinet pictured still has the Hoosier leather manufacturer's tag attached to the bottom.

I have always liked old cabinets with metal tops. I didn't know anything about Hoosier cabinets until we saw the tag on the bottom and searched the internet.

This particular kitchen cabinet belonged to my husband's Great Grandma Scott. The metal top pulls out so it doubled as a kitchen table in Grandma Scott's kitchen. Greg remembers walking to her house from grade school and eating lunch on this table.

There had been an attempt to refinish the cabinet and Greg knew just the person to complete the job, me.

With a lot of elbow grease it turned into a beautiful buffet for our dinning room. Stripping, sanding, staining, and painting is hard work, however, it was well worth the effort. We now have a very different piece of furniture that serves as our dinning buffet.

To refinish the cabinet it took 2-3 coats of stripper to remove all the layers of paint. Next came sanding with fine sandpaper. After the sanding was complete, I finished the cabinet with 2 coats of dark oak polyurethane and varnish combination. The inside of the cabinet is painted white to give it a bright clean look.

The latch on the door is original. The door knobs and hinges were replaced. The casters on the legs were recycled by painting them black to match the rest of the hardware.

The counter on the cabinet is metal, it was scratched and needed repaired. I used rustoleum spray paint to complete the job. I didn't want to paint the black edge around the counter top so I taped it with masking tape. I wanted to keep the spots that were worn down to the metal so I also taped them with masking tape. I finished the counter top with several coats of spray polyurethane. After the job was completed I realized an appliance paint probably would have worked better.

Refinishing is definitely a lot of work, but you can usually get a great piece of furniture with little dollars in exchange for a lot of labor.

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