Interior Decorating and Other Updates

Our Thanksgiving feast

On November first, I made the huge mistake of blinking, and suddenly it was the end of November! I think I managed to make a Thanksgiving dinner in there somewhere, but really this whole month just zoomed by way too fast.

One amazing thing that happened is that I finally got around to finishing a project that’s been on my long-term tasker for almost three years.

WAYYYY back in 2020, when we first purchased this home, this wall in my dining room was literally the only wall in the house that I had a clear, distinct vision for how I wanted it decorated. In my mind, I envisioned two big, farmhouse-style shelves above a beverage station (complete with an ice maker and mini-fridge) that spanned the length of the wall.

Before we purchased the house

What’s not shown in that crappy listing picture is the scale of the wall—it’s over 8 feet long with 20 foot vaulted ceilings… basically, it’s massive. Every credenza I could find was either too small or too expensive. There was one on Wayfair that I seriously considered buying, but realizing that spending over $1400 on a piece of furniture that I’d have to paint and modify to get it to look the way I wanted it to look was ridiculous. If I’m spending that much on a piece of furniture, it better be absolutely perfect. Unfortunately for me, the console table/buffet/credenza of my dreams didn’t exist in reality.

Enter this thrift store find:

The tape is there to keep the doors and drawers closed

This beast is huge, heavy, and very amateurly made. It was also inexpensive (less than $80) and, as such, something I wasn’t afraid of modifying to fit my needs. It took me the better part of a year to finish it—procrastination, perfectionism, and analysis paralysis make a powerful antidote to productivity—but with a bunch of sand paper, several coats of paint and primer, and a few finishing pieces, I was able to get it looking awesome.

Getting closer, but not quite…

The main problems came from the fact that there is not a single right angle on the entire piece. The doors and drawer fronts were too thick for standard screws, pulls, and hinges, and the top was out of proportion with everything else.

Almost there…

After a bunch of hemming and hawing about how I wanted my beverage station to look, I finally settled on drawer hardware, a butcher block topper, and baskets for the center cabinet area (because the doors were far too messed up to put back on).

Perfection!

What I ended up with was a beverage station that looked even better than I imagined, but the wall still wasn’t done. As you can see, there are still no shelves above the beverage station holding cute decoration pieces, mugs, and glassware for cocktails.

Part of the holdup was the availability of a handy man to help me get the shelves anchored into the studs—Jim didn’t want to leave that up to either of us as we are not construction-savvy people and the shelves (the same butcher block as the beverage bar topper) are heavy. The other part of the hold up was me continuing to put off tung-oiling and waxing the shelves to match.

I got around to it eventually.

At any rate, after many delays and reschedulings with our handyman, we finally got the shelves hung!

We had to paint those screws black so they’d blend in better.

And decorated!

Ignore the packing boxes in the cubby area—we’re gearing up for Christmas shipping

It came out amazing, so much better than what I pictured in my mind. I still have a bit of decorating to do—I want to add a bit of a carpet runner in front, and find a few more décor pieces for the shelves. But the big part of the job is done! And it only took three years to finish…

I’m hoping that as I move to decorating other areas in my house that I’ll not take another three years.

We also managed to make and send several Christmas packages (not posting pictures of those yet, as people who visit this site will be receiving those packages), plant our garlic (FINALLY), and have a truly incredible Thanksgiving.

Better late than never!

We’re still waiting on our actual winter weather to come in, but so far, apart from a few incredibly frosty mornings that kind of make it look like we got snow (we didn’t), our weather has been pretty mild.

Not snow, just frost