Cake-cover make-over!

I am a sucker for vintage aluminum. I love its soft sheen. To me, it’s so much nicer than chrome.

My kitchen has aluminum canisters, aluminum trays, aluminum spice jars, aluminum ladles, an aluminum butter dish. . .  You name it, I’ve probably got it.

So I was delighted to pick up this aluminum cake dome for free last summer.

The guy who gave it to me didn’t think it was worth even one thin dime. It’s dented in several places from being dropped and bumped. It’s got a couple paint splatters. It’s missing its base plate.

Worst of all, it has no knob on top.

When it was new, it probably had a varnished wood knob shaped like an acorn. Wonder what happened to it?

The little dents and dings in this cake cover don’t bother me. I could try to rub them out with the back of a spoon wrapped in a dishcloth, but why bother? Anything that spends time in my kitchen is going to get dented and dinged anyway.

The paint splatters are an easy fix, though. A little bit of shining up with a soap pad and the splatters soften enough to rub right off.

Now for the knob!

I think about using an antique doorknob, but decide it’s just too big and heavy for this piece. I pull out my stash of cabinet knobs.

A few are modern, most are old.

Some likely-looking candidates! Let’s try them on for size.

A couple are obviously not going to work!

I love the very old fluted glass knob—the one in the big picture. But in the end I decide to go with the sorta-old white china knob.

It’s simple, it’s all-occasion. It plays well with my vintage Buffalo china dishes.

The tablecloth is a brand-spankin’-new Vera design in linen-look polyester. The holly napkin is vintage.

What’s underneath that made-over cake-cover? A fresh batch of homemade Swedish St. Lucia bread, of course!