Tag Archives: buffet

A Sideboard Comes Home

The week before our Christmas party, it seriously felt like we were doing everything at once. Couch, lighting, sideboard = Lots of money and sweat putting everything together.

Kay and I loved the first sideboard so much that we contacted the owner and scheduled a pickup on what I now know was one of the only snowy days this entire winter. (We have not had any polar vortexes in Switzerland this year…)

We picked up the sideboard on a Saturday morning with a rented truck and boy was it heavy! This thing is massive. We were incredibly lucky that it juuust barely fit in our lift, because I was not sure how I would help carry it up the stairs.

Kay was really impressed by how heavy and well-built the sideboard was. It was no IKEA piece of furniture and when we got it home and Kay tinkered with the switch, the lighting worked no problem.

I love it!! It is a little taller than the other sideboard option and so for a buffet, it is maybe a tad too tall for shorter guests, but we’ll see how it goes with dinner parties. We do have a lot of room for serving nibbles on the table and in the kitchen.

And I really like the way the light toned wood contrasts to our floors.  Once we had it at home, I didn’t really want to paint it anymore since the condition is so good, but Kay was unsure.

I set up all our booze in the glass cabinets to show them off. I’m looking forward to not have to dust all the liquor so often now that it is behind glass.

And in the middle we could fill the drawers with excess items from the kitchen like ice cube trays and thermos.

And in the bottom section we can store our less-often-used appliances like the crockpot, fondue pot, toaster and raclette machine.

We are both really happy with the sideboard purchase. It is the first big, non-IKEA item in the living room and I feel like it makes our house look a little less like an IKEA catalogue. 

Now that we have had it for a few months, I think I am getting closer to convincing Kay that it would not be worth all the effort to sand, paint and finish the sideboard in a lime green color. I really like it natural. It looks very warm and inviting. What do you think?

Searching for a Sideboard

Kay and I talked for months about buying a sideboard for our dining area. We searched in many stores in Zürich and didn’t quite find something we liked, but Kay had the idea that we could buy something used on the cheap and paint it bright green to echo the green going on in our kitchen.

We visited several crazy overpriced used stores in Zürich with sideboards costing 2000-5000CHF (ouch!!) before I headed to my favourite used sites, Ricardo and Ricardolino which has since re-branded to Olx but I can never remember the name. I think they may have run into some legal trouble with Ricardo over names…

Anyhoo, I pulled up several comps for Kay in the price range of 100-400CHF and we whittled our choices down to these two:

I found several sideboards with built in lighting, which I knew Kay would love. He is an LED junkie! Most of the options were too expensive, but I liked the look of this one a lot and it was only 150CHF. It would just be harder to paint green. I was also concerned that if we get glass doors we cannot fill the sideboard with extra crap from the kitchen as I was intending.

Option two was the much simpler, all-wooden doors for about 125CHF. I knew it would be a lot easier to paint, but I didn’t know about the quality of the wood on either piece and if we would encounter strange varnishes or evil veneering. But with this option we could hide so many things in there and customize the doors with some handles similar to our kitchen cupboards if we wanted.

We measured both sideboards out to get an idea how much space they would take up and they were both pretty good sizes for our large dining space.

Next I photoshopped both sideboards to be electric green like our kitchen color. You know how bright it is!

Kay always thinks it is interesting to see color choices in Photoshop first and I agree, but I am not sold on the green. It is SO bright. It would make a huge statement.

Some how, the idea of making an entire sideboard this green seems like a much bigger commitment than the tiny strip of wall above the kitchen cabinets and I feel a bit guilty at the prospect of painting over what could be beautiful natural wood.

If we did go with the first option and painted it, it would be clear that the shelves and inside area through the glass doors would also need to be painted something, maybe white or we thought about a mirror foil for a spacey look.

They are just ideas, but whew… that green. I don’t know! Maybe we should keep a neutral sideboard and work on integrating some contrasting green into the living/dining room somewhere else.

What kind of bold color decisions have you made in your house?