One random morning a few years ago, I got the itch to build something. My wife has a fetish for teacups, but didn’t have a place to put them. I had recently made her a corner cabinet to display her wedding china and tea service sets, and I thought I’d make something to show off her favorite teacups. We really didn’t have much spare room in our cramped DC apartment, but we had a small area between the pantry and laundry doors in the kitchen. I jotted down this design and got her to sign off on it:

If I remember correctly, I had some leftover 1×3s and some beadboard from previous projects, so I really only had to buy some molding and hardware.

At the time, we had recently bought a table and ladderback chair set from a thrift store on half price day. (Ah, the salad days…) It was a great set, but the finish on the tabletop was terrible. That deterred a lot of people, hence the low price, but we saw the value in it. We stripped it down and re-stained the top, but the rest of the table and chairs were painted a nice shade of green:

The idea was to paint and stain the teacup rack so it would match the table and chairs. I stained the beadboard the same tint as the tabletop, and I used the same painting technique that worked so well on my bar to give the teacup rack an antique look. I painted everything with a thick coat of brown paint, and then gently brushed on a thin coat of the green paint I had leftover from the porch swing. It came out great:

She was thrilled to have a place to show off her latest finds. She used to rotate them in and out depending on the season.

As luck would have it, there’s no place for this teacup rack anywhere in our new house. She wants to try to shoehorn it into our kitchen once we complete the remodel, but I just don’t see that happening. I’d say the odds are better than even that it’ll stay out in the garage along with her corner cabinet and the old table and chairs.

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