Grandfather’s Desk: A Vignette

I have started a re-decorating frenzy at my house. Or perhaps just a decorating frenzy, since I didn’t do such a hot job of decorating the first time around.

I am only decorating with items that personally mean something to us. We’ve collected a household of the oddest items, and some of them are not necessary at all. So, if something is chosen to stay in this house, it is of some importance. I don’t buy or make decor items for the sake of having decor.

I also like to spend as little as possible and do most of my decorating by “shopping the house.”

I’m redoing the living area little by little. Here is a weird little spot in my living room that I’ve never quite known what to do with. Sometimes I have this desk in front of it, sometimes I have 2 easy chairs with a table between them, which has always been a little cramped, especially since there was a piano to the left of this window, encroaching on its personal space. The piano was moved several days ago as part of the re-do.

My home has a vaulted ceiling and beams that are cherry-clad and the baseboards are also cherry. We love natural wood, so you’re not going to find me painting very much furniture. In fact, I’m more likely to be found stripping paint from furniture.

The desk & stool are of figured maple and were hand-made by Mr. Crazy’s paternal grandfather, Karl. Not sure of the date. We plan on ordering a piece of glass for the top. There used to be glass on it, but that was before we owned it. Mr. Crazy’s father passed this on to us about 5 years ago.

The stained glass pieces were made by me about 10 years ago. At one point I had a stained glass studio. These pieces were made for an art show and were of my own design. I had never done anything abstract and was going for an “art-deco” look. The cherry frames were made by Mr. Crazy.

This is a photo of my maternal grandfather, Francis, c 1910 or so. Frame from the Dollar Tree.

I’m a sucker for glass and silver metal stuff, so when I was offered some items that had belonged to my mother-in-law (who passed away this past fall), I chose the cut glass mini-pitcher/vase and the metal tray. The vase currently holds some flowers from the anniversary bouquet Mr. Crazy brought me the other day.

I have this terrible ADD habit of just dropping my keys wherever they land when I come in the house. I am constantly looking for my keys when it is time to go somewhere. I don’t usually carry a purse and the keys get shoved in a pocket when I’m out. So, I have put a special tray in the kitchen and one right here and I’m trying to train myself to lay the keys in the trays so I can find them later. I just love all the designs on it.

It is working. Today.

The above photo was just for looks. Here is how the tray usually looks. It also serves as a charging station for the cell phone, because I do the same thing with the cell phone as I do with the keys. Go figure.

The scarf that is on top of the desk was given to me by Mr. Crazy’s mother. She said it was on the piano in the house she grew up in as long as she could remember back. Which makes it at least 80 years old. I had it on our piano until just the other day.

Thanks for looking!

Christine

I am sharing with:

Displaying Random Weird Stuff that you can’t throw away…

So, I’ve been sorting through some “stuff” and I’m determined that any item in our home will either be displayed or will be gotten rid of. No more storing of “stuff” in totes. Dang, Rubbermaid made a fortune off of me.

Anyway.

We’ve been schlepping around this collection of items that belonged to my husband’s great grandmother: The bottom to churning stick thing, a butter paddle, a candle snuffer and a thingy-ma-bob for darning socks. I am not a consultant for technical terms. Deal with it.

An advance apology – these are all cell phone pics. If I had to drag out the real camera, take staged photos, retouch and apply watermarks – this post would not get written. Also because these are all photos from my brand new iPhone that was about 1 hour old when I took these, and I’m not quite happy with the quality, but it is what it is. I’ll post better ones later. Maybe.

I was going to use a crate that I had purchased from some craft store awhile back, but it looked so new and needed some kind of treatment done to it, so I’d been putting this project off.

Then, last week, while cleaning out the garage, I was organizing Mr. Crazy’s bee-keeping equipment and I decided to steal this. I don’t know the official name of it, but it’s used in hive construction/assembly.

Looks like a crate to me!

First I had to brush the heck out of it because it was kind of grimy from being in the garage. That’s all I did to it. I’m in minimalistic expenditure phase when it comes to energy, time, resources and money right now.

Then, I took some copper wire that I had (you could use florist wire, but I couldn’t find mine) and wrapped it around each item and secured it in the back by twisting it with my pliers. Then I trimmed it and smashed it down a little to make it look better:

And here is the completed project :

I purposely mounted the items higher up on the bee crate thing because I intended on this being displayed above my kitchen cabinets and I knew the lower part would not be visible.

Here is the crate displayed in the same area as a spinning wheel and some kind of wool yarn winder that belonged to the same great grandmother:

And while waiting for it to be time to link – I was doing some more rearranging and found this sign that an artist friend (now deceased) had made for Mr. Crazy back when he was selling honey at a little fair. I think it’s perfect!

 

Mr. Crazy has informed me that this is a fruit crate. Even though it was the same exact size and shape of the other wooden items with the bee keeping equipment, it was not bee equipment and had nothing at all to do with bee keeping. I’m all for pretending he didn’t tell me that.

Thanks for looking.

Christine