The time is circa 1900. Amos Gooch is a lobster fisherman living in Cape Porpoise Maine. After he sold his cottage to a rich fellow from Away (anyplace out of Maine), he bought himself a new lobster boat and found himself a new place to live. You see him here in his cozy new digs, with his lifelong best pal, Cap.
I turned the top half of the Reutter cabinet upside down and added a little lip to finish the top. I had already used the rest of the Reutter sink for another room box.
I wanted something to stick under the table, so I made a wooden crate. What could I put in there, that would add some more visual interest? Fish netting! I had a nice fish net made by Amy Robinson, but I didn't want to use it here, as I just wanted something poking up out of the box, and it would be a shame to crumple up a nice fishing net and hide most of it in a box, so I made a servicable substitution. By the way, Amy is based out of Biddeford Maine, which is the next town up from Cape Porpoise.
To make the net I used some cotton gauze. The stuff I had at home was too stretchy and had a funny pattern in it, I suspect it might have been polyester, so I went to Walmart's fabric and notions section and bought a new little packet of cotton gauze.
Next I mixed up a few colors of paint with water to make a grey wash. This particular wash was on the blue-grey side.
I spread a piece of gauze on an enamel tray, then I dabbed on some wash on one end of the fabric, splashed on some water, dabbed on some more wash, patted the dry half onto the wet half, and when the color looked ok, I carefully lifted the fabric off and laid it on a couple sheets of paper towel to gently blot off the excess water.
Next I tranferred the netting onto a fresh surface so it could dry, crumpling and folding it to shape. I made a few of these. Once dry, they tend to keep their crumpled shape fairly easily.
I dabbed a bit of glue on the parts of the crate where I wanted the netting to hang over, then pressed the netting down a bit over the glue.
Amos's chairs are Town Square's Chianti chairs. I had several of these that I had no use for, and didn't manage to sell on Ebay, so I pulled off the leatherette seats and replaced them with matting I cut from some old straw coasters I had laying around. I sanded areas of the chairs to give them a lived in look.
By the way, the flooring is a bamboo placemat. I just trimmed it to fit and glued it down.
The blue hanging wall cabinet is the top half of a Michael's hutch.
While looking through my stash for things to put on the shelf, I found I had one of those shiny, cheap tin buckets. I figured if I toned down the shine on it, it'd look just right so I sprayed it with Krylon matte finish.
I also had a beige metal dust pan by Multi-Minis, nice pan, wrong color. I wanted mine black, so I gave the pan a coat of matte finish, then painted it. I bumped it a couple of times during the drying process, so I had to reapply color and finish it off with a couple more coats of Krylon before I was through. I did the same thing with the shiny tin ladle, turning it into a more antique looking black one.
By the way, the little wooden chest was made by cutting a piece of scrapwood and a small section of molding. I stained the molding a darker color, glued them together, and applied a dab of silvery paint to simulate the latch.
One more little tip.
I loved the style of this little plastic cabinet, but wanted to tone down that plastic shine, so I brushed on a wash of thinned down brown paint over the whole thing, including the white knobs. I think it came out rather well.
If you'd like to see Amos's original cottage, the one he sold to the rich city slicker click here.
