Sunday, March 21, 2010

Finishing Room

As our furniture business grew it no longer seemed to work very well to quit working in the shop when ever there was a batch of chairs and tables drying after a coat of varnish. After a lot of discussion and planning Daddy and Mom decided to add an addition to the old house right next to ours and turn it into a place to stain and varnish furniture where it could then dry while Daddy kept on working in the shop without worrying about sawdust and shavings covering the wet varnish.

One of the first things that had to be done was finally remove all the antiques from the upstairs of the old house. Most of the things were piled together to discard but some of them were set aside in hopes that we could sell them to an antique dealer.

We children removed the bunches of dried herbs and grasses that had been collecting dust for years while hanging from the rafters. We stuffed them in boxes to be carried outside and burned. They were joined with rickety old chairs and numerous boxes filled with books that fell apart when you tried to page through them the pages having become yellow and brittle with age. Stacks of old letters and pieces of weirdly carved wood all met their fate on the discard pile. I felt a little sad to be throwing everything out, especially since John, David and I had become quite fond of this interesting room filled with old dusty things.

Once everything was sorted and taken care of we called an antique dealer to come see the things we had saved. He seemed very anxious to buy everything that remained. There was a box filled with hundreds of old marbles that he offered to buy for a dollar a piece. John, David, and I sat down to count them, putting them in piles of a hundred. We felt as if we had hit a jackpot!

Once everything was sold and otherwise taken care of a neighbor came by with a crawler to dig the ground away in front of the old house. Our rosebushes, and bleeding heart plants had to find a new home as the addition was added and almost a week after we started the project Daddy finally had a nice place to finish the furniture he made.

8 comments:

  1. Wow! I am drooling thinking about the antiques that your parents might have sold. I bet that antique dealer was in heaven!!!

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  2. I bet it would be so fun to go through all that stuff now! You'd probably still get rid of a lot of it but there may be bits and pieces you'd grab if you could. I'm sure your mom was surrounded with beautiful furniture though. GREAT story ~ ♥

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  3. I can't imagine having so many treasures and what a lot of work went into all the things your family made!! Cute story about the marbles, I would have bought them too!!
    I was wondering if you had photos of the quilts you used to make with your Mother, I bet they were wonderful!!
    Hugs,
    Margaret B

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  4. I can certainly understand your reluctance to part with all the things you had known and grown to enjoy. Somehow there seems to be a security in them.

    I am surprised the antique dealer offered so much for the marbles. I never would have dreamt they were so valuable. The new shop sure went up in a hurry.

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  5. As a child I would have enjoyed all the cleaning and sorting; today it sounds too much like work!

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  6. I din't think marbles were that valuable! I am sure it was nice to have a place for the furniture to dry.

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  7. I would have crushed the dried flowers and grasses to me and inhaled every wonderfully musty scent. I can only imagine how difficult it had to have been to give up your hide-away.

    I wish my bathroom remodel was going on as quickly as the finished room was put into place!

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  8. Antiques, you say, ANTIQUES! Oy! Wish I'd been there ... you did hit the jackpot on the marbles, I'll bet.

    I'm trying to catch up ... I just love reading your writes.

    Happy spring!
    Have a beautiful week.
    TTFN ~ Hugs, Marydon

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Thank you so much for taking time to comment. I love hearing your thoughts.