Furniture memories.

We had one of those serendipitous experiences last weekend that make you smile when you think of them.

Todd had stopped at a garage sale Saturday morning and picked up a couple of old hand tools from an older guy who had come over from Smithfield to try to unload a few things at his daughter's sale. The man was a retired engineer who restores antique furniture now.

When he got home, Todd realized that he still wanted a few of the tools he'd passed up, and he also told me about a hutch made from an old letter cubbyhole box that the man was selling. We thought it might work in our dining room. We went back to where the sale was later that afternoon (and let me tell you it was a small miracle that Todd was able to find the place again!) and the guy had gone back over to Smithfield with his stuff. So we got his phone number and arranged to drop by that evening and look at the hutch.

Well, what a lovely hour we had with Dave and his wife. The hutch didn't work out, because it was too big for the spot we would have had to put it in, but we had a super time looking at Dave's backyard woodworking shop (Todd madly taking mental notes for his own shop) and chatting about various things as Todd and Dave looked over the shop and Todd bought the old toolbox full of tools that he'd wanted.

We were heading back to our car, full of apologies for interrupting their dinner, when Dave asked us if we'd like to see the antiques in their home, since we'd been chatting about antiques and auctions. Would we?!

Dave and his wife have been collecting antique furniture for what seems to be most, if not all, of their life together, and the only "modern" piece of furniture I could see in their home was a swivel computer chair, which sat in front of a gorgeous library table-turned-computer desk. Everything else, even the TV armoire which was repurposed from what looked like an old wardrobe, was beautiful and old.

What made it so special, as they took us through every room and pointed out every gorgeous piece, was that they had a little story or memory that went along with each one--where they'd picked it up, how much they'd paid for it, the child who'd slept in that bed, the woman who'd given them that bookcase from her father's old law office.

On the way home, we talked about the memories associated with our own bits and pieces of furniture. We don't have very many antique pieces, and I'm not quite sure why. Probably because when we've needed to buy furniture, we've needed very specific items, and not just whatever fate happened to toss in our path at a sale. Also, antique furniture has risen in price quite a bit between Dave and his wife's early married days and our own.

But we do have some things that have definite memories attached, and I thought I'd share them.

I've probably told the story of our china cupboard and sideboard (our only truly antique pieces) before. When we moved into our first apartment together in Pittsburgh, we had nothing--nothing! The woman who was vacating the apartment had lived there for decades and was moving into a nursing home and had some things she couldn't take with her. So we paid her $100 for a scratchy plaid couch, a metal wardrobe, a rickety card table, two vinyl kitchen chairs, and these:

As we were talking Saturday night we realized this was our very first furniture purchase--bought a week or two before our wedding. And they'll always remind us of our crummy first apartment in Squirrel Hill.

Our first bed is long gone. It had beautiful bedposts with knobs carved sort of like pineapple bottoms. It was given to us by Todd's parents, who had gotten it themselves from an older lady at their church.

She also gave them the dresser that went with it, and Todd's mom gave me the dresser a few years later when we moved back to Ohio from Idaho.

When we got our new bedroom furniture last year, I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of the dresser, even though the pulls are broken off one of the drawers and another drawer's slides are broken--it has such great lines and it holds so much stuff! So it moved to my study where it holds computer ink, felted wool sweaters, and excess grocery items.

The dresser is also special because it still has the label on the back from the furniture store in Columbiana (our hometown) where it was bought in the 1940's.

After a few years of marriage, we were finally solvent enough to start buying new furniture to replace some of our hand-me-downs, and the very first thing we bought was this couch, my love for which has been documented here before:

Nine years isn't antique, even for a couch, but it's very squishy and beloved and a reminder of the joy of having disposable income for the first time in your life.

Once we'd bought the couch, we decided to replace the kitchen table and chair set next, which were, again, hand-me-downs from Todd's folks. (They pretty much were our furniture suppliers for the first several years!)

We both wanted something well-made and unique, so we headed up to Holmes County, which has a large Amish community and large numbers of Amish craftsmen making some of the prettiest, sturdiest wood furniture you'll ever see.

We also bought coffee and end tables there a little later on. We'd have bought our bedroom suite there if we were still living in Ohio. How I miss Holmes County! We really enjoyed our drives there, through the countryside, and then having lunch at one of the Amish restaurants in Berlin, and then roaming through stores and warehouses that smelled like wood and polyurethane.

When we bought our first home in 2002, we needed some odds and ends, and we found this little old table at an auction in Clintonville, one of the old neighborhoods in Columbus.

It's nothing special, but it has a lovely wood grain on the top, and looking at it reminds me of that sale and the pretty summer day, and the excitement of buying our first house. The chair next to it is from that same era--one of two small Ikea armchairs that have worked perfectly in every place we've lived since then.

We bought one more piece of Amish furniture before we left Ohio--the pie safe on the right. It went into the red kitchen of our first home, to serve as a pantry, and it looked wonderful there. I think it looks nice in my green kitchen, too, though. (Better than the light in this picture shows, anyway--yikes! Our kitchen is apple green, not mint green!)

The piece on the left is also from Amish country, but Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, rather than Holmes County, Ohio. We took a trip up there a couple of years ago to attend a machine show, and I dropped Todd off there and went out to explore. I found that stand at another Amish furniture showroom, and a nice man hauled it into the back of my station wagon for me. What I always remember when I look at it is the arctic January wind that blew across the fields around that farm and showroom. Brrrrrrrr.

When we moved to Virginia, we found that auctions and good estate sales were harder to come by. But I found this chair at one of the only auctions I ever remember attending here, the first year we lived here. It was sitting off on the edge of the yard with a bunch of other very forlorn looking chairs, and we hung around till almost the end so I could bid on it.

It had pale green upholstery hanging off it in tatters, and dirty stuffing sticking out all over, and was probably a thing of beauty 40 years ago. I wanted to find a fabric as close to the original as possible when we took it to be reupholstered, but there was nothing like it. So I went with something different (and have regretted it ever since!)

I paid $35 for the chair at the auction, which was probably $30 more than it was worth, and we spent several hundred to have it reupholstered, but I persist in calling it my "$35 chair." Someday when I have a few more hundred bucks with nothing else to claim them, I'm going to scour the shops until I find a fabric I really love and have it re-reupholstered.

So our home is a mix of things bought new and used, but the thing that makes them special is the memories attached to them. When we walked through Dave's home, we could feel the happiness and the love he and his wife feel for each other, for their family, for their beautiful things and for their memories. It was a peaceful, contented home. I hope our home feels the same way to visitors--because it does to me!

You gotta love serendipity.

I had a bit of good luck today. I've been looking for a quilt for the past six months or so, with the idea of wrapping it around the seat cushions of my couch, to extend their lives a little longer. I found a frayed spot right in the center of one of the cushions a while back, and it's just been nagging at me. I don't want the fabric to tear.

We bought the couch new exactly nine years ago and I love it as much now as I did then. It was a momentous purchase because, if memory serves, it was our very first NEW furniture purchase after eight years of marriage. I wasn't at all sure what kind of color/pattern I wanted, but the minute I saw the swatch, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that was what I wanted. The funny thing was, it wasn't at all a color I'd even considered before!

It's just a very simple gray-green with a leafy pattern woven into it. I think the fabric's called jacquard...? This shows the pattern well:

Such a great couch, I just love it. Sigh.

I happened to pick up the Kohl's flyer out of the newspaper yesterday and all their quilts were on sale. So I stopped by this morning and found a twin-size quilt on an end-cap that looked much closer to what I had in mind than anything else I'd seen. It was $31.99 on sale, which wasn't great, but I figured I'd take it home and give it a shot and bring it back if it didn't work. $31.99 is still cheaper than a whole new couch, right?

When I got to the check-out, the girl beeped it, and then gasped. "This is only $5.99?!" she said. Yep, as a matter of fact, it was! It's discontinued! Huzzah!

Here's how it looks:

What do you think? I haven't sat on it yet, but I think it looks nice. I may have to safety-pin it along the bottom if it shifts around too much, but that's okay.

Later!

Yard sale finds.

We were having our new mattress set delivered yesterday sometime between 8 and 10 AM, but we found a few sales that started at 7 AM, so we left bright and early and ran out to see what we could find.

We came skidding back home at about 8:05, and the delivery guys were just getting out of their truck! Whew!

Then after they left, we went back out for a couple more hours. We're yard sale addicts, I fear.

Here's a couple things I found:

a small McCoy planter bowl to add to my collection:


two pairs of linen cargo pants, two pairs of capris, one pair of dress pants:


a few old books (I think I might frame the seashell pages for our bedroom):


an old birdcage--at least I think it's old:


We were planning to stop by Target or somewhere to pick up some queen-size sheets for our new bed, but I found a set at a church rummage sale for $3.00. Score!


They don't match everything exactly, but for three bucks they'll certainly do until I find the perfect new set. I think they're quite pretty, too!

Our new bed is so, so wonderful. We've been sleeping in a double bed for 16 years--the first eight years we had a very old hand-me-down from Todd's folks, then we bought a new Sealy Posturepedic in 2000, which started going south after about five years, and now we've made the move to a queen.

We've had the bed since December, when we bought our new bedroom set, but waited around to get the new mattress. So we've had the new headboard propped against the wall with the old full bed in front, and the footboard and side rails tucked up in the garage loft. Not the greatest arrangement! Now it's all put together and looks great.

(Hey, I don't even make the bed for my own husband--do you really think I'm going to make it just to impress y'all?)

I had noticed that Macy's was having a Memorial Day mattress sale last weekend, so we stopped in and lay on a few and found a Sealy with memory foam incorporated that we liked pretty well. But Todd is a shopper-arounder (sometimes annoying, but usually a good thing) and we stopped at the Original Mattress Factory the next day and found one we liked even better. Then we went to Mattress Discounters and lay on a few more Sealys with memory foam. But we ended up liking the Original Mattress Factory set the best.

Can I say a few words about the OMF? This is a chain that was founded by a guy who'd been with some mattress company for years and decided to spin off and build his own mattresses and sell them direct. This guy, Ron Trezinski, does his own commercials, and much as you might expect, they are supremely annoying. He reads his own copy in what I can only describe as a lilting monotone. It makes you want to stick skewers into your ears...especially if you have auditory hyper-sensitivity like I do. <---I made up my own name for my condition--nice, no?

OMF had stores in Columbus, so we were subjected to the commercials when we lived there, and then we moved down to Hampton Roads, VA, which also happens to be an OMF market. Nooooo! When I worked at the scrapbook store and had the radio on all day, I used to sit and fantasize about ways to kill Ron Trezinski, who was a VERY heavy advertiser on the classic rock station! And here we were about to put a fairly hefty sum of money into that man's pocket. But we lay down on this extra-firm mattress with a thin pillowtop and it just felt like heaven. Supportive, yet just the right amount of cushyness.

Ah well. Scruples just can't stand up against the promise of a good night's sleep, and I certainly did have that last night. But Ron Trezinski can still bite me.

Saturday catch-up.

I just waved Todd and his co-worker R. J. off to a big poker game, so I have the evening all to myself.

It has finally, finally gotten chilly-ish here, and now I'm ready for fall. Unfortunately, now that Halloween has passed, the rest of the world has moved right along to Christmas, which I am assuredly NOT ready for.

We had a fun little Halloween evening here. Todd pulled on his suit of armor and stood on the driveway waving at the trick-or-treaters and pointing them up to the front porch where I waited with the candy bucket. Some of the kids thought he was a robot or Robo-Cop. And the toddlers were mostly scared of him. However, he did get challenged to a couple of duels, so there are obviously a few kids out there who recognize a knight when they see one.

We had about 60-65 kids come by. I just love seeing their costumes and ogling their full bags of candy. We didn't live in a neighborhood when I was a kid, and my mom had a niggling feeling that Halloween was of the devil, I think, so we didn't do much trick-or-treating when I was little. The result is that every Halloween I just want to grab a pillowcase and make a costume and go out and hit the streets with the rest of the kids. Of course I can't really do that, so I have to just console myself with the leftover Halloween candy (Tootsie Roll pops.)

Todd's parents were here for a week in mid-October, and we had a great time with them, as we always do. They are such low-maintenance houseguests--they can take care of and entertain themselves if necessary, and they just fit into the flow of life here really well. Todd and his dad got to do some fishing, and we all just hung out, puttered around, hit a few sights and shops, and otherwise relaxed. Very nice. And they were here for my birthday, so that was nice, too.

Yes, I had another birthday...I haven't figured out how to avoid it yet. It was pretty painless this year. My mom sent along some great presents with my in-laws, so I had those to open first thing in the morning. My mother-in-law and I went to Smithfield with my friend Cheryl, and we did a little walking, a little antique shopping, and had a fabulous lunch at the bakery there. And I was inundated with phone calls from my loved ones all day, plus some great handmade cards and pictures from a few of the nieces and nephews. I also had a couple very interesting renditions of "Happy Birthday" sung to me over the phone by my nieces Natalie and Marissa. So it was a good birthday. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget how blessed I am, and how often the biggest blessings are the ones that seem the smallest.

This week we ordered some new bedroom furniture, which I still can't quite believe. We have a whole bedroom full of hand-me-down furniture, and not one piece goes with any other piece to the tiniest degree. I've been okay with it for fifteen years, but suddenly a couple weeks ago, I was not okay with it any more! So we shopped around and ended up with this set from Bassett: Eastbrook. We got the bed, two nightstands, the tall chest, and the "door dresser," without the mirror. It will be very interesting to cram it all into our bedroom. It will all fit, except the bed. We currently sleep in a double, so I think the bed frame will go into the attic until we're ready to splash out on a queen mattress/box spring set. Anyway, it'll be exciting to put all our stuff into new dressers!

Now I think I'll read for the rest of the evening. I have an enormous stack of to-be-read books, courtesy of Paperback Swap, and it's great to just go grab a new book whenever I'm ready for it.

It came, it came!

I got my lovely chair today! Now I need to whip the rest of the room into shape!

So what I'm going to do is find a nice coordinating fabric and get some wonderful person to sew a new cover for my thrifted footstool, and a curtain for the window.

I was going to do a valance over the window, but decided last week that maybe one pretty side panel, pulled over into a swag on the left side, would look better, since there is literally two inches of wall between the window and the corner.

Then I have to paint my thrift store table white or off-white, which I think will look much cuter and show off its shape.

THEN I have to clear all the lingering bits and pieces out of the other side of the room. I don't know why it's taking me so long to get my act together with this room re-do--I think I need longer to think things over than I ever used to before. Or maybe I'm just lazy.

The Georgia O'Keeffe poster is coming down, too--the colors are too purply-pink for this room. I'm going to cover my two big bulletin boards to make one of those French ribbon memo boards, I think.

We're finally getting some wonderful rain today, which will make the grass even longer and the trees even leafier. We're getting a little pinchy-faced about our next-door neighbors, who have weeds/grasses in their yard that are easily a foot tall now. I'm not a grass nazi by any stretch, and our grass is a little patchy-looking out front, but sheesh, take five minutes and mow the front, for heaven's sake. Lovely people, but apparently not yard-proud.

I forgot how bad new upholstered furniture STINKS. How in the world can inhaling that be good for anyone? I had the window open and the ceiling fan on till the deluge began and I had to shut it. Then I spritzed on a tiny bit of Febreeze, but I think that stuff may smell worse than the original stink. Chemicals creep me out!

My very own Chairy.

(PeeWee's Playhouse, anyone?)

I think I mentioned before that I'm working on turning my scraproom into more of a computer/sitting room, and I'm looking for furniture to accomplish this.

What I really wanted was a comfy chair to sit in and read or sew, especially late at night when I can't sleep. One night a month or so ago we stopped by a few furniture stores just to look. The first one we went to had a couch covered in this fantastic floral fabric. A chair sat next to it that was the exact style I had in mind. Of course, this store was by far the most expensive furniture store I'd ever been in. Which isn't saying too much, but still...

We went to a few more stores, and then I hit several thrift stores, and I was planning to also go to some auctions and sales this spring and summer to see what I could find.

But I just couldn't get that fabric out of my mind. It was PERFECT for my study.

Last week I went back to see if it was as great as I remembered, and it was. Long story short (too late, you say?)--I ordered the chair I loved with the fabric I loved. And it wasn't near as expensive as I feared--the fabric was marked down and the chair was on sale. My allowance will be in arrears for a few months, but I think it will be worth it.

The saleslady printed me a copy of what it will look like, so that's what's in the picture. The arms will be different, because I changed my mind on that, and the color is brighter, but it's a good general idea. It will be about a month before I can get it, and I am DYING to have it, so I can curl up in it and relax in my study!

Now I can get a coordinating fabric to cover my thrift shop ottoman, and to make curtains, and it will all be perfectly girly, which apparently is something I'm morphing into in my middle age. Go figure!

I'm so excited...!

Makeovers.

My Target desk and hutch came today, huzzah! Now everybody needs to post a comment and tell my DH to get my old countertop torn down so I can put these together and start whipping this study back into shape!

I love thrifty finds, and screw-it-together furniture seems so...soulless...but honestly, I could look for months for something like this at sales and thrift stores before I found what I was looking for. So, soulless and quick it is.

I am, however, scouting the thrifts for an armchair of some sort for my study. Something comfy, maybe overstuffed, or maybe a little more structured. Not formal, more cottagey.

I found a little ottoman that should be easy to slipcover yesterday, plus a funny little table with a magazine rack built in that I'm going to paint white and put my teal lamp on. So that's done. I just need the countertop down, the computer table moved, and a chair to sit in, and I'll be almost there!

Then I want to slipcover my office chair, put up curtains of some sort...and then one room in this house, at least, will be done.