We Couldn't Pass Them Up

Now that Thanksgiving weekend is over, I thought I'd show you some of the other stuff we've been doing besides eating.  We've been taking little, impromptu road trips lately to our favorite haunts, namely graveyards (where my new status as a geocacher-er is being put to good use, incidentally) and if an antique store or three should happen to pop up on the way, well, of course, we have to stop in at them, too.

A word here about my 'decorating/furniture style'....it's non-existent.  I overheard a rather feline visitor tell another guest long ago that the decor in our home resembled 'Early American Hodge Podge', which I took as a compliment, despite the snarky way she hissed it.  That is, until I found out it wasn't meant to be a compliment. (I guess that's why she was whispering?)  Then I was a tad hurt. 

This marble-topped table belonged to my mother's mother.  Since my mother is now 91, this table is Old.  It was the first piece of antique furniture I have ever owned, and the only thing I have from my grandmother who passed away at the age of 41 when my mother was 8 years old.

But I got over it and decided to embrace my trendsetting ways. Actually, the lady was wrong, our furniture was more like 'Early Marriage Too Broke to Afford Anything New' style, really.  And though she's never been back to visit us again, we haven't changed much of anything since.  Instead we keep adding to the mish-mashed collection.


When we got married in 1978, my mother-in-law gave Carl and I a pair of little tables she had gotten from a thrift store which had at one time been a  bedroom dressing table connected by a mirror.  Somewhere along the line, someone had sawed the tables (with three drawers apiece) apart from the mirror and they began their life as independent pieces.   My mother-in-law had painted them a rather chalky blue color which looked nice in her home but my plan was to someday strip the paint and restore them to their original wood finish.

Our youngest son, Dave,  had them in his room as bedside tables for years until he grew tired of them and stuck them out in the upstairs hallway.  Since he had seeming disdain for them, I nabbed one when we finished the stained glass Iris shade a few years ago and stuck it in the corner of our dining room.   (On that horrid orange vinyl floor of ours, it made quite the 'statement'.  I was really going to strip the blue paint eventually...)  The other table stayed put upstairs.

When Dave moved out a month ago, he came home to pick up more of his stuff and surprised me when he brought the little blue table downstairs with him.  "Where's the other one?" he asked me.

I stammered, "In the corner of the dining room, under the lamp."

Well, he felt bad then.  "Oh, I never noticed it there....did you want to keep them?  I thought they were mine, but I won't take them if you don't want me to."

Of course they were his!  They had been in his room since he was little and I was glad to see he wanted to put them to good use as bedside tables for his new apartment.  (He is in the process of refinishing them now.)

Plus, this gave me the excuse to go hunting for something new for us.  Well, I should say something old for us.  We both love old furniture.  Carl was all for the adventure.  You never know what you'll find.

Like Yammie.......(short for Yawman & Erbe, an old office furniture maker extraordinaire) who came to live with us two years ago.  There's 30 drawers here, yes, Thirty....and they're all put to good use.

 Yammie (pronounced Ya -me, not yammy, like a yam, sheesh) is now instrumental in keeping my canned goods and recipes in order and freed up a huge amount of cupboard space in the kitchen:

Notice the inordinate amount of space in this drawer for 'Bar Recipes' aka anything with chocolate in them, followed by an Apple Crisp.....

And, another confession....I use canned corn.  I just never have much luck with growing our own.  It's all the raccoons around here, they get to it before we do.  (That and I'm too lazy to can it.)

This is our First Aid drawer.  We play with stained glass quite a bit and we're a clumsy bunch at times, so this drawer is used far too often.

I don't know what I'd do without this huge, old cabinet. We found him in a tiny antique mall, sitting in a corner.  Yammie is made of quarter-sawn oak and is all in pieces, you can arrange the stacks of drawers in any configuration. 

So, since Dave took his corner cabinet, we needed something to stick that lamp on.  Time to go antiquing!  On a rainy night a few weeks ago, we headed to a few antique stores.  One we love to browse through is a huge gallery of antiques that have all been restored.  They have the most beautiful furniture.  If I had a huge house, (and a huge bank account) I could easily furnish my entire home with the absolutely gorgeous pieces in their store.  Alas, our home is much too small for most of the lovely furniture, but we can dream, right?  Their prices are not that high, though, considering the workmanship and materials that went into the furniture.  They just don't make stuff like that anymore, at least not in stores we can afford. 

 We left the luxurious antique gallery and headed to another antique mall, arriving within fifteen minutes to closing.  We decided to split up.  Carl went left and I went right. Just as the announcement of the store closing came over the loudspeakers and as the lights were being flicked off, I came around the corner and there it was.

An old cabinet, the kind that held phonograph cylinders before the days of CD's.

I have a 'thing' for quarter-sawn oak and this little cabinet was so sturdily built, it just had to come home with us.  Just look at the drawers; I love drawers.  In this small house of ours, every inch has to count.  We crammed it into the backseat of our Pontiac and off we went.

The old phonograph cylinder cabinet makes a wonderful stand for our assorted stained glass lamps, too.

I haven't named it yet. (You know I have a name for almost everything, right?)  I guess I could call it Phony, but that seems rather mean.  Or Cilly? (For the cylinders it used to hold?)  Goodness.  Some people call these Edison Cabinets, so I guess this could be Eddie, but somehow, it doesn't look like an Eddie, either. Any ideas out there?

Moving on.........here's something we found this past week at an antique store-aganza. Now, you may wonder what in the world we are going to do with these, and you'd be right.  We don't know yet.

Do you recognize them?  They are tree grates, used in cities to allow water and air circulation for trees growing in sidewalks.  These four incredibly heavy grates are our Christmas present to each other this year.

 (I put the old bow there to show how I would wrap these if I was giving them as a gift.  That's right, I'd just tie a bow on them.)

They are big, about 5' wide and almost 3' tall.  I was thinking a gate of some kind, because I especially like the way they look upside down with the ribs sticking up.  Like a sunrise or a sunset.  The guy at the antique place didn't really want to part with them all that much; he had plans to take a torch and do some creative cutting and welding, but I love them just the way they are.  I was seeing them mounted on a lovely pedestal of some kind and used as a driveway entrance.  Or something.  That's the problem with us, it's always something.

I also thought of using stained glass as an insert.  These could be used for boot grates, too, to wipe your feet off on (that was Carl's idea). 

One thing is for sure, we'll use them.



For something.