The biggest piece we brought from Kevin’s parents’ condo was this china cabinet. We’ve honestly needed a china cabinet forever, but didn’t really want to spend the money to get one — all the china has been jammed into cupboards that weren’t really big enough to hold it. We inherited Kevin’s mother’s china (cream with gold trim) and Kevin’s grandmother’s china (I think, must check — it’s covered in lots of pretty flowers).
We’ve had it for a long time, because Ann and Ron weren’t really the sort of people who threw parties where they would haul out the fancy china. But I am that sort of person, so I was happy to take it, and we’ve been using the cream set for fancy Thanksgiving dinners for many years, and the flower set for tea parties every once in a while. But now we actually have a place to put it, which is nice.
I love the metal work on the glass doors, and the shape of it overall is good. It’s not my favorite wood, and doesn’t quite go with any of the other wood, but the effort it would take to strip and re-stain it (or paint it) is more than I’m likely to go to, so I think we’ll just live with a little more mismatched wood in our house. That’s fine.
It does look nice, I think, against the reddish-purple walls of our dining room. (The color is British paint company Farrow & Ball’s Brinjal, which means eggplant in Tamil, which has always amused me. Ah, colonialism.)
Having a china cabinet finally does mean that my glassware habit (we’re trying not to call it a problem…) is clearly on display now. I think I really have to have a cocktail / mocktail party in not too long, just to have a good reason to use it.
It’s all gold-detailed (as is the china), which means it can’t go through the dishwasher, so please don’t tell me to use it for everyday, because my life will not function if I have to hand wash dishes everyday. I like having fancy items that I only pull out and use every once in a while.
I get to pretend I’m on Bridgerton, which is much fun, and then I go back to my lovely everyday life, where Kevin loads the dishwasher, and Anand unloads it, and Kavi and I never deal with dishes at all. As it should be. 🙂
