The Adventures of Dawn and Gina

So Wednesday mornings, my friend Dawn and I get together. Mostly we try to work on projects around the house or building stuff that goes in our house. :) She has found that when left to myself for too long, I go a little crazy so she graciously checks on me every week! ;) I think I will post the things we do and projects we accomplish as we finish them...fun huh'???

Anyway, this morning we went out in search of cabinet doors for my kitchen. My remodeled kitchen is AMAZING but Chase and I haven't gotten around to ordering doors yet...or finishing my backsplash...but anyway. I decided I would try to find random cabinet doors to go in my kitchen, I would refinish them and hang them even if they aren't the same kind of door. I thought it might be fun to go that country cottage/eclectic! So Dawn and I set out to see what we could find. We went to this place we had both heard about but had never been to. It was just some guy's yard but he basically has his own thrift store back there! He had sheds and sheds and piles of stuff!!! OH MY WORD!!! Such amazing stuff! Dawn walked out with this leather chest/trunk for $30!!! And while I didn't find any doors that would work for my kitchen, I did decide that I need a bigger house for all the cute stuff I could buy there! Tons of cute antiques, furniture, dishes, claw foot tubs, signs....*sigh* even ooooold metal kitchen/stoves. He even had a green one....I could have cried. ;) I decided to take Chase back there on Friday-he will really appreciate it too! But in the meantime, I decided I couldn't walk away without this guy:

Isn't he gorgeous??? I have been meaning to switch to cast iron cookware (thank you, Salad Master!) and this was the perfect first piece!!! Yes, it was in need of some serious TLC, but at $10 how could I go wrong???
So I started in on the clean-up! And not much was working....this stuff was not coming off!!! The best thing I tried was actually a stainless steel cleaner. It was getting it off, but really slowly. So I called in for back-up- my Mother-in-love! She suggested soaking it in water, vinegar and baking soda...that the reaction would help take off the permagunk! And it worked!!!