Before and After - Vintage Thingies Thursday

It is time for Vintage Thursday Thingee - and I've got some great things to share. Please join us at Coloradolady, where Suzanne is our hostess, to see vintage thingies!

And stop over at Bloggeritaville for Thrifty Thursday! You know you want to see all the wonderful thrifty buys.

When we lived in CA we had a friend who lived in a wonderful old house. The yard was full of wondeful flowers and trees. Lucille had gardened all her life and the yard was wonderful.

A lovely spirea that had grown horzontally along one fence . . .

Wysteria that scented the town for blocks around . . .

And a bush that grew the biggest snowball flowers I'd ever seen . . .

Lucille had lived there for years and years and now she was alone in the house and soon it became apparent that she no longer was able to stay in her home. Her niece decided that instead of selling the home, she would rent it out, giving Lucille the hope that someday she might be able to return to her home.

The house was full of lovely old antiques - used by Lucille all her life, and I asked her niece, since she was renting out the house, if I might buy the small china cabinet from Lucille. Her niece said she thought she would leave all the furniture for the renters.

Not long after, we were jolted awake by the fire siren going off in town - and as we looked out our window we could tell that the fire was near Lucille's house - in fact it WAS Lucille's house. The fire department was only two blocks away and they reached the house in time to save it - but not before major damage was done.

The cause of the fire - the renters had wanted to save money by not using the dryer and had piled their wet clothes over the large intake grate to the furnace. When the furnace could not get enough air to circulate through the house because of the wet clothes on the intake grate, it caught fire and the fire quickly spread to the attic over the kitchen. Most of the house was saved, but many wonderful antiques were lost.

The next day we walked past Lucille's house, and the smell of wet, burned wood, and the drip, drip, drip of the water still there from the fire hoses was the most dismal sight and sound I'd ever seen or heard. It broke my heart to think of Lucille's house burning.

Soon after, her niece called me up and offered me the china cabinet for free. Here is the reason it was free . . .



The lovely little cabinet was burned, and wet, with broken glass and smoke and fire damage. I took the cabinet anyway and put it in our back yard. Then began weeks and weeks of sanding and scraping, more sanding and more scraping. The top was burned so badly from the fire being in the attic that I had to replace one of the boards on the very top.

After the scraping and sanding and cleaning was done I painted the whole china cabinet white, added some pretty knobs and it was ready to use. For several years bits of fine ash would sift down - from nooks and crannies that could not be reached to clean - it has finally stopped - 20 years later.

In our new living room . . .

Filled with my pine cone dishes, with a flock of chickens below . . .

We are thinking of painting the back of the open section white, so other dishes will show up better. Thinking - that's all for now - just thinking about it.

Have you refinished a piece of furniture? Was it more or less work than you anticipated?