Many moons ago, my mother gave us a china cabinet. It was in the dining room in the house that I grew up in.
Storage-wise, it’s great. It’s tall. The top half has glass doors, the bottom half has solid doors and hides all kinds of things. Dividing the top and bottom is a big wide (and deep!) drawer that holds our cloth napkins, special-occasion cutlery, and all kinds of odds and ends. (I can’t tell you how many chocolate bars I’ve stashed in there over the years.) Even the roof of the cabinet serves as storage.
Mark and I have talked about replacing it because it wasn’t our style and didn’t match anything we had going on on the main floor of the house, but I couldn’t find anything that came close its amazing storage capacity. And when I did spot something that might fit the bill, it cost a fortune. (Also, worth noting, I’ve asked around, and looked around, and these kinds of antiques aren’t in vogue or worth very much on the resale market.)
I thought maaaaaaybe there was a way to remake this cabinet so it suited our style. Enter, Malenka Originals.
I’ve been following this business for some time now. The owner, Katrina Barclay, was a neighbour of ours a few years ago. She had a cute furniture remodelling workshop and store in Britannia Beach, which moved to Hintonburg a few years ago. We wrote about the store opening in the community newspaper. I followed her on Instagram and absolutely loved how she transformed the ordinary into something extraordinary.
I wrote Katrina an email in early February and outlined an idea I had. Within a short time we had a plan and the cabinet was carted away.
Then came COVID, and as you know, the world came to a grinding halt, and so did Malenka Originals. (For the record, I was cool with this. Such is life, and it’s only a china cabinet, after all! No biggie.)
Well, we got it back the other day. If I was allowed to use only one word to describe how I felt when I saw it in person it would have to be: THRILLED. It was totally worth the wait.
Here’s are a couple of “before” pics, just so you have an idea:
… and here’s the after:
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