Antique Hutch

If you know me, you know I am nostalgic, a girl with a heart that loves the past and longs for the days of beauty and elegance. A few weeks before Christmas on a crisp Sunday Morning, Rich, My Dad and I all went antiquing. Antiquing is something I have grown to love over the past few years. As a child, I couldn't stand going antiquing and I just couldn't understand why my parents were at all interested in dusty , old furniture that once belonged to someone else!

Now that I am married and have a house of my own, I truly see the beauty and charm in antiques. But back to my story . . .

Well, let me backtrack just a bit. I have been obsessed with purchasing an antique hutch to place in my kitchen breakfast area. I have been searching high and low and just hadn't stumbled upon the right hutch.

While antiquing that Sunday morning, we came across the most gorgeous Oak antique hutch/ buffet!!!! I'm pretty sure my jaw literally dropped in awe at the beauty of this fabulous furniture piece! It was sadly WAY TOO expensive and of course out of our price range. Knowing that this hutch didn't fit into our budget, I tried not to think much more of it.

Guess what my parents showed up to our house with the night before Christmas Eve???

 Yep!! The HUTCH!!!!

 I adore my new hutch and it found a cozy little home in my kitchen where it fits in beautifully and replaced an old Ikea cabinet that very much so needed to retire off to the land of unwanted furniture, ( also known as being used as a folding table in our laundry room).  :)

 Here is a top view of the hutch. I love pineapples and I have adopted them as my signature. This hutch has a pineapple at the top!!!

Here is the bottom half of the hutch which opens and can be used to store silverware, linens and all of my many cookbooks!!!!!

I'm one happy Hunny in love with her Hutch!!

In all of my daydreaming and longing for a hutch, I started doing a little research on antique hutches and buffets that I thought some of you might find interesting. 

"Hutches are large furniture items that are similar in many ways to cabinets. Hutches are usually used for storage, though they are also used for showcasing prized and valuable possessions--even for serving food. If you happen to collect a lot of knickknacks or porcelain figures, an antique hutch is a perfect and timeless way to display them in your house.



Types Of Hutches

There are various types of antique hutches that collectors often come across. The main varieties of antique hutches you will usually see are buffet hutches, china hutches and kitchen hutches. They are almost always constructed out of wood. The names of these kinds of hutches are rather self-explanatory, as they tell you what types of items are usually contained inside the hutches.



History Of Hutches

Antique hutches have usually been around for at least a hundred years. There are a lot of antique hutches available for collectors, since most people tend to purchase brand-new hutches instead of going through the trouble of seeking a vintage hutch. Most antique hutches are on the bulky, large and heavy side. However, that is dependent upon the origin and country the hutch came from.



Benefits Of Hutches

Most antique hutches are rather subtle and simplistic in their design, because the main purpose of hutches in the past have been for function and utility, not for aesthetics. This makes them very easy to blend in with other furniture and decoration in your house--a plus for collectors. Also, hutches made a hundred years ago usually have thick, solid, heavy wooden panels, which are extremely sturdy and durable and probably the reason many of them hold up so well for so long.



Warning About Hutches

When you purchase an antique hutch, you probably will have to have some repairs done on the item because the hutch probably has worn out over the years and certain vital parts might be missing or ruined. You might also have to have some missing parts replicated. Many antique stores will perform these repairs and services on antique hutches.