Dinky Manor

I’ve had (shared custody of) my baby armoire since I was a baby. The armoire, along with a matching bookcase and bed were my nursery furniture. With the exception of the Ikea bookcase that Mr. Foxypants uses to store his record collection, my baby armoire is the ugliest piece of furniture in my house. But I don’t care. I love my baby armoire because it reminds me that, at one point in my life, all my worldly possessions could be stored in one little wardrobe.

I think I’ve spent my entire life aspiring to get back to a (mental) space where I could store all my worldly possessions in one piece of furniture.

Because my mother, in her heart, is a frustrated interior decorator, I had a totally mod, Eames-inspired nursery. No pink for me. The drawers and door of the armoire and shelf interiors of the bookcase were painted in color blocks of bright red, buttercream yellow, dark green and navy blue. Very Mondrian. My nursery looked like the swinging studio apartment of a tiny beatnik. Complete with the homemade, cardboard, play kitchenette.

My sister and I have been sharing ownership of the baby armoire for literally our entire lives. It’s gone through about nine different paint jobs. Most recently, the armoire had been living at my sister’s house, where she’d been using it in her studio to store her canvases and oil paints.

I’d painted the baby armoire the sea foam green color when I was living in my first post-college apartment. I slept on a pull-out sofa, so during the day, the baby armoire was my linen closet. Once I bought my house, I had no use for it, so my sister used it as her dining room china cabinet.

The baby armoire needed a little love before I put it into my house yesterday. My dearly departed dog, in a fit of rage, had decided to eat her way into the armoire when I left her with the house-sitter instead of taking her on vacation with me. Yes. Those are teeth marks.

After filling in the damage with wood putty, I sanded down the entire armoire and painted it with a thick coat of primer to even everything out. For once I was actually thinking and tinted my primer red. Well. Okay. Pink. Since it’s hard to get really good coverage from red paint, the tinted primer allowed me to get by with only two coats of red paint as opposed to the usual five.

Do you have a totally functional belonging that is both nostalgic and aspirational? Please explain yourself in the comments section!