Tag: estate sales

Lucky, redefined.

“No more estate sales,” the WideEyedSpouse decreed on the way home from the upholsterer. We had just paid the deposit for redoing an antique sofa we scored for 20 dollars. It wasn’t going to cost 20 dollars to make it usably un-stinky and gross.

“No more upholstered furniture at estate sales,” I negotiated. He nodded. “For a while,” I amended, ignoring the sharp look he sent across the center console.

That was seven months ago. I broke only once late last spring and came home with an iron koi, an iron dragon, and antique porcelain vase with a little bird on it. Indisputably all cool things – none needing upholstering. “Ok,” the Spouse said, patting the dragon on the head and smiling at it, “no more estate sales until the house is painted.”

June. July. August. September.

Last night we stashed the scaffolding in the basement. The fall rains started and the temperature dropped. We’ll finish next summer. This morning I saw the Spouse flipping through pictures on his computer tablet. “What’s that?” I asked. “Oh, just that estate sale down the street…we don’t need to buy anything but we could go to see the house.”

My new lamp has wee tiny koi fish as feet and the paint work is chipping a little bit. It might be a 1960s tv guide, limited edition kind of a lamp. It is sort of grotesque. The Spouse’s new lamp is a monstrous purple thing with hand painted flowers. It seems to be a Frankenstein, actually DESIGNED as a mash – maybe as some kind of post-war quickie production. Repurposed oil lamp parts, similarly designed cast metal pieces, sketchy wiring, giant glass globes, and decades of filth battle it out for most repugnant aspect. The red Christmas bulb in the base portion gave the thing a repulsive faux-Victorian, bordello glow. “Oh man, that’s something,” I said when the Spouse flicked it on – bravely flicked it on because the wiring was exposed through ancient electrical tape.

But here’s the thing. My new lamp goes, perfectly, with the imitation William Morris rug in the living room. The Spouse’s looks like it was made to complement the unspeakably ugly antique cotton Craftsman-era rug in the dining room. “How lucky,” I just said, “that no one bought these before the clearance prices started.”

October 3, 2015
The little table asked to come home with me.

We meant to get to the estate sale earlier but the lure of sleeping late on Saturday morning proved too much. As it turned out, we got there in time. This estate sale was 4 stories of furniture, rugs, leaded windows, and interesting heaps of stuff. It was in a partially converted industrial warehouse in downtown Buffalo and I can’t figure out what was going on. Maybe some living space, maybe some packrat issues, maybe a business? Wasn’t clear.

The stuff was arranged on raw cement floors flea market style on the first and fourth floors, stacked warehouse shelving on part of the second, and weird decadent lounge on the second and third with little side rooms of warehouse chaos. Everything was tagged twice. Black price was Friday. Red price was Saturday morning. Everything was at least half off the red price and we were told by another dusty scrounger that it was best to just talk to Andrew (one of our local estate sale moguls) for the best deal.

The WideEyedSpouse and I both have wicked colds but we girded ourselves and tromped through the levels twice, three times. Second floor: antique leaded glass window: $20. Second floor, loft: mahogany mini side table $20. Not veneer. First floor: bureau with bookmatched drawer veneer $30. Fourth floor: two ironstone platters: $10 and one leathertopped side table: $20.

I was running my hand over the veneer on the bureau when I saw the little maple kitchen table and chairs. My breath caught. It was weird how my breath caught. I saw like it had happened, was happening, would happen again and again – I saw myself sitting at that table in my bathrobe drinking coffee and reading the paper in the morning sun. The table and chairs aren’t anything special. They’re probably c. 1920s, hard used, and one chair is sort of broken. They were dirty. Didn’t matter, they were already mine. I looked at the price tag. Red price said $100.

The sharks were circling tighter. I felt a little thrill of fear. I needed the floor person who established prices and marked items sold – ah! There she was about fifty feet away with people walking toward her. I made eye contact and smiled big, bright, like she was family I hadn’t seen in years. She started for me and ignored the other people. The power of positive feelings! The little kitchen table and chairs were mine. Er, ours. The WideEyedSpouse is welcome to sit there with me.

The people milling and swirling around the sale were getting increasingly desperate while we loaded our loot. “You want to sell that?” an older couple asked when we walked by with the bureau. I thought they were joking but maybe not. “How much did you pay for that?” a chic blond asked us moments later, her eyes were running over the intact drawer fronts. “Thirty dollars,” I said. “You done good,” she told me and broke into a stiff jog toward the building entrance.

The little table is all set up in the kitchen. I scrubbed it and the chairs with a vinegar and water mix. The Spouse tightened some screws. I sat at it to clip coupons and shuffle through the Sunday paper. After three years living here, I felt warm, and safe, and settled.

March 30, 2014
Too many socks.

It was a problem. Gym socks. Knee socks. Hiking socks. Fuzzy winter socks. Socks more normally called stockings. Blue, pink, white, black, nude, brown, and striped socks. Hand knit. Silk. Cotton. Socks.

Simply. Too. Many. Socks. The bureau drawer was a stew of tangled toes.

Then, one cold spring day in the not too distant past, a miracle. A solution. We trolled through the estate sale remnants of a family’s life in Tonawanda, New York. The memories of nearly a century were laid on tables, stacked on shelves, piled in heaps for eager crowds to paw through. For a WideEyed person it is an overwhelming experience to witness a lifetime of personal items. Sad. Interesting. Somehow the stuff was too infused by another’s life for me to form a connection.

The WideEyedSpouse and I fought the crowds and made it from the attics and into the basement. And there it was: abandoned among basement junk, shoved against a brick wall, hung around with faux fur vests for sale. It squatted on its turned legs with the remnants of an old, tired dignity. The chifferobe. Sock-home.

We wrestled the Starr Furniture Company c. 1920 mahogany veneer and cedar chifferobe through a basement door no wider, no taller than the chifferobe itself. Daylight did it no favors. It was dull and awful. Decades of mildew, basement filth, and the recent scars from faux vest hangers befouled it. It stank of basement. From its open doors wafted stale perfume from another generation. It fit in the mighty Pathfinder as though it had been constructed specifically so that I could get it home.

We bathed it in a 10% vinegar solution. We rubbed crusted gunk and wax away with Life O’Wood. Old English healed the hanger scars. Minwax Paste Finishing Wax fed the wood and made it glow, just a little.

Chifferobe. Sock-home. Welcome to the WideEyedHousehold.

May 11, 2013