Antique Jam Cabinet

I like Shabby Chic decor. I like cottage decor. I like flea market, French, country, traditional, and Victorian decors as well.

So when it comes to decor in my (still being remodeled) kitchen, I have developed a style of decor I like to call "Shabby French flea market country farmhouse cottage" style decor. I know what I like, and what I want, and instead of settling on one boring style, I just decided I wanted it all. To some extent. Tee hee.

Anyway.

One of the many treasures I discovered in the barns on the farm that I cleaned out when we moved here was a mysterious "box" with a shelf in it. I left it in the barn for awhile, not sure what I was going to do with it; as it was pretty shabby, and squirrels had been living in it. It stayed in the corner of the hay loft in that barn next to piles of antique tobacco sticks.

("Tobacco sticks" are not cigarettes... they're wooden sticks they used in the old days for hanging the tobacco in the tobacco barns for curing and drying. They're considered antique now; and I've seen them auctioned for a pretty tidy sum.)

Then one day I was moving some things around downstairs in the barn when I found a piece of wood that looked similar to the box upstairs; with the same shabby paint. But it was just a corner piece with a henge.

I kept rummaging around, when I found a second piece; and what do you know..... the two pieces formed a door. Then I had a revelation: the door was for the cabinet upstairs in the hay loft! It was a old "jam cabinet"!

I dragged it back to the house. And of course the door fit perfectly and all I had to do was screw it back on with some new screws.





I put it in the pantry while I thought about what to do with it. I thought about taking all the paint off; I thought about painting over it; but in the end, after two years, I decided this week to leave it in it's present condition, shabby chipping paint and all, and just "shellac" it in place.

It is a perfect "farmhouse" piece; or a "Shabby French flea market country farmhouse cottage" piece, if you will.







It's in the pantry - a very appropriate place for a jam cabinet, I thought.
You can see some green paint underneath the chippy white paint:



The door, I noticed, is carved with a kind of Scandinavian design, that you can sort of see, if you look real hard:



Looks like this:



I have no idea how old it is exactly, but it is.......... old. For sure. And I love it! How perfectly "Shabby French flea market country farmhouse cottage"!!