Preservation In Action

Why preservation matters:

Because...

1) The new construction house near me has already had more repair people by in the seven weeks that they have lived there than I have had here in the 28 years I have lived in my 1886 house.

2) (on a more optimistic note)

In the fall, we cleaned out the garage and I agreed to release some of the furniture I had been hoarding.

Sending this table into the wild was really hard. I had gotten it from my dad when I first moved into this house, and had used it as a plant table, covered by an old piano scarf that I had over-dyed purple. But the top of the table had lost layers of veneer and was in terrible shape, and we had no room for it anymore, and even though I got it from my dad and it had terribly sentimental memories and my heart was saying "But he'll never be able to give you a gift again!" I knew it was time to let it go.

My friend Jennifer was looking for furniture for her new home, and I gave it to her. Little did I know how amazing she would make it — look at the picture she just sent me!


For contrast, here is the original piece (after she had cleaned it up just a little):


Pretty impressive, huh? You can follow Jennifer's home renovation adventures on Instagram at @56560fixerupper.

In the meantime, should you feel inspired, I still have this couch and the light blue rug at the front right of the picture looking for a home....



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Race?

Image
 (sign from a NOLA bar) Probably the world does not need another middle-aged, white, cisgender woman writing about race. But the world DOES need my daughter's take on it, and she doesn't blog, so here I am. When we first knew we were having a girl, we knew she would have blue eyes, because mine are blue-grey and Patrick's are blue-green. The genetics don't vary much on that one. Other than that, we thought, with dominant genes and some luck, that she might look like her Aunt Patrice. Which she actually does. Except for the tiny little issue that somehow my Nordic genes totally went dominant rogue and she turned out to be blonde and very light skinned. (age 1.5 in the Scow family christening dress) So since she's been old enough to communicate, she's had people confused about her racial identity. She's been told she checked the wrong box on forms, she's had teachers deny her ancestry, she's had government officials question her Global Entry, she's
Read more

New Year's Eve 2023

Image
I did not want to be laying in bed, wearing a fleece onesie and still shivering, while my husband and daughter headed out to the several wonderful NYE parties we have planned. I have a beautiful new dress that I got in Duluth for tonight, and was looking forward to the collection of friends we would be seeing. Our friend Whitney in particular is throwing the last party at her B and B, and it's breaking my heart not to go. But I feel logey and coughy, and more to the point, I have a low fever, and I don't want to mess around with possibly getting anyone sick. I'm still holding out hope that I'll miraculously feel better and the fever was a mistaken reading, but I doubt that. And I feel lucky to have 3 sets of people who want me in their lives tonight and who I don't want to get sick. As our yoga teacher Viv says, it's not like a page turns and everything is magic. You get some things that are good, and some that are not, and life is living in the middle. -- In 20
Read more

Choosing Happy

Image
This post is brought to you by a few thoughts from yesterday: First and foremost, Patrick's new book that he wrote for Beatrix for her sixteenth birthday. Available for a hot second before we leave for spring break tomorrow. The response of someone he knows on the internet, who wrote yesterday that he had decided years ago that he would never be happy (and reading his posts, he seems to be right.). It was one of the saddest things I've encountered in a long time. A friend's social media post, in which she discusses another person's comment of " I really think a sizable proportion of the population has become addicted to being angry" with the sage response of " I think a lot of them are doing it because it's more enjoyable to be angry than to be depressed." A nd we finally finished watching this season's Fargo last night. I won't give any spoilers, but it's extremely on theme with this post. So this is the deal. There's a lot on
Read more