coach house cabinet

The history of the coach house cabinet: So, when I was a kid, my parents rehabbed houses. We moved a lot and were often living in the houses they were fixing up. When we weren't rehabbing a house, we were living with my Grandmother at her old coach house in Wilmette. The house used to be a real stable to the larger house next door. The horses and coaches were kept downstairs and the upstairs was an attic apartment for the coachman. In the 70's my Grandmother bought the place and fixed it up as her little getaway... it was called 'Happy House'.

So we lived there on and off when I was a kid up in the attic apartment. It had 2 bedrooms, a living area, small kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen had the cutest vintage stove and refrigerator. There was also a small countertop for food preparation, which we are assuming the coachman built. Though currently painted with about 3 layers of various paint, the wood is a mixture of oak, birch and maybe mahogony? The back of the piece is actually wood beadboard that was used throughout the coach house itself and the top is possibly zinc - the coolest part being that it has hundreds of knife marks on the top of it from chopping assorted things over the years. We stored all our cereals, cookies, snacks, etc in the bottom roll cabinets and our silverware in the top two drawers.

Now that we have our bedroom all set-up we've decided to rehab the cabinet and turn it into a dresser of sorts, I'm thinking those old storage cabinets would be a great place for jeans and t-shirts! =) We just started the process of scrapping off some of the paint this past weekend. More progress photos to come in the following weeks!

can you tell I made him pose for this one?