To Alex -

To Alex...who is far away in person, but never far from my heart. I miss you. Enjoy these snippets of everyday family life here in the states.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

More Basement Thrifting

So, I wonder how many other people have a basement full of sentimental items that they just can't bring themselves to get rid of. I have boxes of dishes and flatware and pictures and linens and misc. items I can't identify. And I have furniture, lots of furniture. All of it belonged to my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and even my great-great-grandmother. Hers would be the chair and settee frames, which I had every intention of reupholstering - ahem, 25 years ago. They still aren't reupholstered. Now don't get me wrong, I've reduced the collection by at least half over the years. I've refinished my great-grandparents' pie table and the secretary that was used in their store, and I do have the quilt squares from the ggg-grandmother framed and hanging in the livingroom. But there's still so much down there. Now my goal is that every time I start digging in the basement I'm required to come up with something that either gets reused upstairs or I get rid of it. That's hard! One of the pieces that has been taking up space down there is a Martha Washington sewing cabinet. It was broken, but I was pretty sure it could be salvaged. You don't know how many times it nearly ended up in the trash because I didn't know how to fix it. Lucky for me JV is very knowledgeable when it comes to working with wood and he showed me what to do. It really was a simple fix - scrape all the original glue off and put more glue on. Clamp it together for a few days and voila! A 'new' piece ready to be moved upstairs, well, after a good cleaning.
Hmmm, and I just happen to have items that will store quite nicely inside.
Here are the icky before pictures:

And.....the beautiful after picture. My aunt made the doily for me years ago.

I wonder what other treasures are lurking down there?

3 comments:

  1. I have my grandmother's sewing cabinet just like this. I did refinish it when I inherited it, and I put new knobs on the front. It sits in my living room with a tiny stained glass lamp on top. Yours is lovely with the doily!

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  2. I am glad it came out so well, I was worried about the glue holding.

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  3. I collect antique sewing implements. I'd love to find such a sewing cabinet. Lucky you!

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