Knobbery

Chris and I have a slight obsession.  We want to change the world-one drawer pull at a time.  

We were quite blessed that we have some old family furniture pieces in our home.  Some might not find them very attractive, but we think they are beautiful.  We were inspired to make the pieces our own.  We certainly did not want to paint them as they were made with beautiful wood.  We have lots of other thrift store pieces that we are happy to paint and transform.  However, we had to be even more creative with the family pieces to make them ours.  


I would say the obsession started quite some time ago.  Poor Chris has been on many shopping trips with me where he is forced to go into stores where there isn't a man's item in site.  One particular store of this description is Anthropologie.  What Anthropologie does have is a tremendous housewares section.  And hidden amongst the coffee cups and gorgeous tapestries, there are small treasures of many shapes and sizes.  Knobs.

Oh, they are beauties.  I have a particular fondness for the word knob-mostly because of that silent K-n combination-a complicated concept that I have had to deal with my entire life-I particularly feel that adding the silent K changes the way the word feels when it comes out of your mouth, and trust me on this one because I am a silent K expert.  Anyway, there was one particular piece that we knew we wanted to cover in knobs.  It was Chris' parent's chifforobe.  For those that don't know (because I didn't), a chifforobe is a "a closet-like piece of furniture that combines a long space for hanging clothes with a chest of drawers."  Thank you wikipedia.  I would also like to thank wikipedia for using the word portmanteau (apparently chifforobe is a portmanteau of chiffonier and wardrobe-even wikipedia is a portmanteau).  I intend not only to start utilizing that word but also incorporating the concept into my everyday life...Chifforobes are genius, and I am glad to finally have one-even if we use it as a game and blanket closet (ganket-that's my portmanteau of game-blanket-closet).

For months we looked at knobs, planning the knob project in our heads.  Then moving time came, and we had the chifforobe in our possession.  But we did not have knobs.  We considered ordering them from Anthropologie offline, but the knobs are pretty expensive even on clearance.  So, our search began.  And we ended up at the store where all craft dreams come true, the entrance to hobby enthusiasts everywhere, Hobby Lobby.  Unfortunately when I portmanteau that I only come up with Hobby or Lobby-depressing...

We were not expecting to find any knobs so we arrived at the store close to closing time.  So, with about 10 minutes to spare, we stumbled upon the most brilliant aisle for knob lovers.  An ENTIRE AISLE dedicated to knobs.  It was knob paradise.  We did not want to use all the same knobs-we wanted a different one for each pull, and there were 12 in total.  12 individual pieces of artistic genius!  12 little statements of our internal craftiness!  12 tiny explosions of furnishing glory!  So, we scoured the aisle and frantically selected knobs.  For some reason on that particular day, the Hobby Lobby staff really wanted to go home.  So every minute, we were given a count down that the store was closing, that we needed to get to the checkout counter, that we were going to be arrested and locked in prison if we didn't get the heck out of their store-I'm serious, the guy was grumpy and must have really wanted dinner.  The pressure was on.  We grabbed all sorts-laid them out of the ground and carefully selected the most perfect knobs for our chifforobe.  It really was a fun project-and the knobs were incredibly inexpensive!

We had our knobs and our chifforobe and with a few twists of the wrist, our project was complete.  Our ganket is now perfect.

We love our ganket, and this was just the beginning of making our house our home.  Trust me-there's more to share.  We do think you should join us in the knob revolution (knevolution)-change a knob, change your life! (or just change the look of one of your furniture pieces)...