January Nonsense

Ah, January.
That month between Christmas and . . . not-a-heck-of-a-lot.
We don't get a really good holiday now until Easter.
Valentine's Day?  Eh.  Flowers, candy, yadda-yadda, done.

So, January. 

Not my favorite month of the year.  Not Dion's, either:

Saturday's snowfall.

It's the first month of a new year, every year, and I don't like change.

I don't like having to write a different number on the date line of my checks.

I don't like the feeling that the worst winter weather is still to come,

and that the fun part of winter is already over with.

Yeah.  I can get a little crabby in January.

It helps to find things to laugh about.

Like, de-Christmas-ing the house.

You know I love Christmas trees, and have a really hard time taking them down when January 6th

has passed.  My good and patient husband Howard has found a way to avoid having the trees still up

and dropping needles on St. Patrick's Day; he takes them down himself,

and I don't even have to watch the awful carnage if I don't want to.

It's how we go from a holiday riot of trees, to this . . .

 a stripped down parlor badly needing a midwinter makeover:

Howard does the trees.  I get the rest of the Christmas bling.

 After I think I've got it finished, I take a careful walk around the house to see what I've forgotten.

This year, I checked the house several times, declared it Christmas-free,

and it wasn't until the next day that I noticed this:

Yeah.

The front staircase, for crying out loud!  How could I have walked past it over and over again,

without noticing that it was still festooned in lovely crispy-dry pine roping and giant red bows?

Don't answer that.

I probably don't want to know the answer.

Also, don't light a match.

Have a great Wednesday, and if there's snow where you are, I feel your pain.

Ours fell on Saturday -- about 5 inches -- and is pretty much all gone now.

Yay!  Green(ish) grass!

I and my dog rejoice.

A Happy January Day to you! -- Cass

Ramblings From A Fevered Brain

It is Friday, and it's getting late in the day, 

and I have spent most of my time today on the sofa in the study,

watching television, which reminds me of why I never watch

television during the day unless I am sick.

Which is what I am today.

Sick.  Or, sick-ish.  Tired, draggy, and running a persistent little fever that started Thursday afternoon.

My get-up-and-go, got-up-and-went.

Too draggy to do a post about The Mystery Chest I bought on Wednesday.

That might take thought.  Too much work!

But I'm not too lazy to drag out a few old pictures, and write around them.

Ah, one bad movie just ended.  A second is about to begin.

I think I'll check The Weather Channel, as we're supposed to get some of this stuff on Saturday:

Bright note:  Snow is lovely when you are inside the conservatory, looking out.

While it falls, it makes this lovely little tippy-tippy-tippy sound on the ceiling.

Look what I found in my picture files:

the original header for That Old House.

Yikes.  I'm glad I changed it!

I have very few pictures of our front hall, taken from inside the house.

Here's one of them.

(I told you this would be rather random.)

This is like rummaging through that old shoe box full of old photos that everybody has.

But guess what?  This, below, is not our kitchen.  Although I wish it were.

I also wish I could remember where I found this picture,

and I apologize to whomever owns it.  At least I'm not using it for monetary gain.

I just stare at it sometimes and think wicked, envious thoughts.

More ramblings from my fevered mind -- this is the as-yet-unfinished dress

our costume designer daughter Anne is currently "building" for a play.

Costume designers don't use patterns -- they make a mockup in muslin,

"draped" on the mannequin, and then they make it in the real fabric.

I could probably make an apron that way.  IF it didn't have a top.

Okay, I've rambled enough, and I'm getting ready to pretend to watch the movie, but really nap.

Mr. Dion DiPoochy

wants to add something to this post:

(Dion likes those dirty jokes.)

Have a wonderful weekend!

I think I'll be mostly in the sunroom, watching some snow fall.

Hey, there could be worse things to do!  -- Cass

Baby Steps

If you read this blog, you already know I am cheap.
If you've read this blog for any length of time,
you probably also know that I am lazy.

So when I find a cheap piece of furniture in need of a miracle, I look first for an easy way to fix it.
In this case, by cheap furniture I mean free.  See yesterday's blog.  

Free washstand or telephone table.  In rough shape but sturdy.
Puts the shabby in chic, that's for sure.

And by in need of a miracle, I mean in really awful condition.

See?  I am not kidding.

Is there any way to handle this without having to do any actual work?


I plan on putting this little guy in my antiques booth and selling him for
hundreds and hundreds of dollars . . . Not.  Maybe tens of dollars.

Howard to the rescue.  No, not my husband Howard, although he rescues me all the time.
This time, it's the Howard Company, which makes wood care products, including this:

Feed-N-Wax.

The Lazy Lady's Best Friend -- a mix of waxes and a bit of orange oil.

Available on Amazon, at Home Depot, and probably at your local hardware store.

Here's what I did while watching the noon news today:  I wiped on the Feed-N-Wax . . . 

. . . a nice generous coat.  Then, I relaxed for about 20 minutes, and followed up with a

good buffing with a clean cotton cloth, to get rid of the oily sheen and bring up the waxy gleam.

There's Dion, sound asleep, behind the table.  I never wax him.  Almost never, anyway.

 It is not perfect, not by a very long shot.  It still is beat up and, ahem, rugged.

But it does look better, and who knows?

Someone may fall in love with this little street kid and want him "as is."

If not, I haul him home again from the antiques booth, and do him up right --

melting his finish and reamalgamating it.  How's that for a 64-cent word?

Or, I paint him.  We'll see.  But my bet is that priced right, he'll sell.

I used Feed-N-Wax on another table in December, wrote about it here.

In 30 minutes, that table went from this, stripped and dull:

to this:

I put it in my booth on a Sunday, late in the day.

It sold the very next day.  Thank you, Feed-N-Wax.  :-)

The only problem is that I really liked this table, and I kind of miss it.  Oh well.

We have to let them grow up and toddle out into the big world, I guess.

Tomorrow -- more on The Mystery Chest from Wednesday's post:

I think we're getting close to consensus on what it is.

No Link Parties today for me -- I can't figure out where to put "ugly furniture badly restored."

Maybe I need to start my own blog party -- Cass

The Puzzle Of The Mystery Chest

It's a beautiful day here in northern New Jersey, sunny and not too cold.

Beautiful -- if you don't mind wind that whips the shingles off the roof of That Old House,

and flings the neighbors' Christmas tree from the curb in front of their house,

across the cul-de-sac, and halfway down our driveway to the hedges.

See the tree?  It held up remarkably well for rolling so far; the tinsel is still on it!

On this gorgeous day, I took in some gorgeous scenery.

I drove north, into upstate New York near West Point, to pick up a couple of tables from a Craigslist

listing.  Yes, again . . . risking ending up in the chest-freezer-in-the-basement for the sake of, well, junk.

Came home with two scarred and well worn Pembroke-style tables,

in good physical shape except for their complexions.  These gals have been around the block a few times.

Here they are, reclining in the back of my minivan, along with my other junking finds from today,

and two baskets of things needing dry cleaning.  Just keeping it real.  :-)

 These tables will be lovely when I'm done with them.  Trust me.

They've got good bones, good wood, good brasses, and intact hardware for the leaves.

The seller tossed in a very cute little washstand, or telephone table; not sure which it is.

It, too, is in need of a visit behind the Red Door at Elizabeth Arden but heck, it was free.

We like free.

Maybe I will paint it.  The jury is out on this one.

It's nice and sturdy, and that is a big bonus.

Now, for the Mystery Chest!

The seller said he had a few other pieces to show me

(yeah, we've all heard that one before ....)

and what caught my eye and my imagination was this:

It's a little chest, with three very shallow drawers, a locking mechanism for a lift-up top,

what looks to me like Eastlake hardware, and a sadly over-aggressive refinishing job.

 Whatever patina it once had has been stripped and sanded off, and a poly top coat applied.

Hey, we all did it back in the 70s and 80s -- lots of antique and vintage furniture lost most of its value that way.

This chest has two square thingies on top. . . .

 . . . that have corresponding square "holes" on the underside of the lift-up lid.

Yes, replacement shiny hinges.  Oh what were they thinking?

Front of the chest, showing the lock (no key), and the three drawers.  You can see how shallow they are.

Nice ogee molding around the top.  That's the middle drawer pulled out.

 So what is it?

A spool cabinet?

An artist's cabinet, or architect's?  So papers can be stored flat?

The seller speculated a tea chest, where leaves would be spread out to dry.

He's wrong on that, I think.  No ventilation.

And . . . what kind of wood is it made of?

It is not oak.  Nor pine.  It's a heavy wood.

The wood has some grain, but it's not pronounced.

There are lots of little "dots" in parts of the wood.

Maple, maybe?

C'mon, people!  Put your thinking caps on and figure out

what this really cute cabinet once did for a living!  -- Cass

Visit Susan at A Southern Daydreamer for Outdoor Wednesday.  Click here!

Estate Sales, Craigslist, and A Daughter In The Trunk

So our daughter Anne may regret having come home this weekend.

It was a hunter-gatherer weekend for the booth, but Saturday was a bust.
We went to an estate sale at a big 18th century farmhouse.

Of the few things we might have wanted, all were priced way too high.
I am beginning to think I am not going to waste time on local estate sales;
prices are generally what this cheapskate thinks are too high.  It's Craigslist and auctions for me.

But we did enjoy looking at the house, which was amazing.

And much larger inside than it looks on the outside.



Anne took pictures with her phone inside the house.

Keeping Room; check out those floorboards!

Looking up the center hall stairs.  I've seen this same delicate handrail and balusters in other 18th century houses in N.J.

Upstairs hall; look at those boards.

More stairs, handrail, hall.  It's domestic sculpture.

One of the many bedrooms.

The other side of the Keeping Room.

A Study, lines with bookcases and a built-in bar.  In a newer wing of the house, which also housed a kitchen.

The study and the kitchen were in the wing you can glimpse on the right in this picture.

There's also a barn on the property.  This is one big homestead!

But we did get to see a part of New Jersey that was new to us but obviously,
from the age of the houses, not new to New Jersey.

What a beautiful old house.

******************************

On Sunday, after church, we picked up a vintage French country style dining room table (Craigslist!)

that I hope to sell on eBay.  It is huge; with its 3 leaves it stretches to 10 feet long.  Lovely table.

Getting it in the back of the van would have been easy, except we had one Stow-and-Go seat up.

Where Anne was sitting.  So, we put that seat down, slid the table in, and . . .

had nowhere for Anne to sit for the 30-minute ride home.  What to do?

We considered strapping her to the roof of the minivan but, not being enthusiastic

about that plan on a 15-degree day, Annie crawled in under the table, and just lay down.

We took back roads home.  She survived.

We were not stopped by the local constabulary and ticketed for Bad Parenting.

Hi Mom!  Thanks for the ride home!

Howard realized that it was the first time since she was born that

Anne rode in one of our cars, without either a car seat or a safety belt around her.

*******************************

But this 3-day weekend is not over yet.

This morning, Anne helped Howard carry a highboy to my minivan and load it in.

And he closed the van hatch on her head.  Ouch.

It's only January, and we're already in the running for Parents Of The Year.

Anne's helping me bring the highboy to my antiques booth today, and I've promised to treat her to lunch.
I hope she doesn't get food poisoning.  -- Cass


P.S.  These are also going in the booth:

Milk glass goblets, and Avon ruby glass goblets and matching decanter.  

There were 12 milk glass pieces when I bought them (from a Craigslist listing) and when I unpacked them, there were 13.  I have no idea how that happened, but I'm pretty sure I'd have known if the little devils had reproduced themselves in amongst the pink packing peanuts.  

I think I'd have heard the clanking, and the giggling.

By the way, this is also the highboy that's waiting for its trip to the booth,

so I better leave the computer and fire up the minivan.  Have a great Monday!