Old Shit (Here-->)

There are some things I look forward to all week - the very few mornings I have time to jog, pasta dinners on the nights those jogs are long, days off in general...and, my very favorite, trips to the salvage yard!  AHH the salvage yard.

I'll admit it.  Once upon a time when I was really young (talking elementary school young, before I had a nick of taste obviously), I hated antiques.  I hated most old things in fact.  Growing up in Virginia, most of our school field trips were to places in the earliest days of America - Jamestown, Monticello, Williamsburg - and all I could think about while I walked over the three hundred year old floors was how much I wanted to be outside.  I couldn't stand the thought of touching a railing that hundreds of now dead people had touched (I mean how old must those germs be?) or the musty smell seeping from every inch of fabric.  Ick.

But somewhere along the way I grew up.  And grew smarter obviously.  And while I still love to be outside - and am still somewhat (?) annoying about cleanliness indoors - I've really come to appreciate the value in historic things.  Thus, my uncompromising opinion that our first house had to be at least 75 years old.  Maybe it's the older I get or the more I learn about age, but there's something undeniably amazing about a piece of work that has outlived its creator by decades.  And I've become a little creepy so the thought of the decades old skin cells of somebody in an entirely different life is just fantastic.  Yeah...

Now we're not all on the same page here.  My father, on the other hand, moans and groans every time I mention the word "antique" or "craigslist" or "classic" because he is the biggest do-er in this little project of ours and every time I try to get him to install something that wasn't made to standard sizes and bought at home depot this means more doing for him.  But never worry - if I get my mother behind my crazy, antique ideas, I'm golden.  You see, while I've had a number of years tricking my father to get my way, my mother has had nearly 30.  Yeah, she's a pro.

But anyway, today started out with a trip to the land that I love (no, no, not America, but that's good too) - the salvage yard.  Oh junk.  Oh dirty, nasty, cheap and messy piles of junk.  But if you've been, you'll know what I mean when I say that digging through the crap to find the truly golden oldies is half the fun.

Today, my mother and I went with the intention of checking out this gorgeous mantel I had seen a number of weeks back.  (Side note: you can spell correctly mantel - or mantle - two ways, did you know that?)  As I mentioned before, when our house was stripped a few years ago by the previous owner, all the original trim was removed - including the original mantels.  I still don't understand this mindset.  Replacing something that has survived for one-hundred years with something that came off the block yesterday?!  Really?!  Ok, off the soap box.

The mantels (or mantles).  So this particular salvage yard is huge and hugely overpriced, but when the lady said it would run about $1k, I barely batted an eye.  Sign me up.  You can't put a cost on character, right?  And then she said it was....SOLD.  Of course, we had her phone the buyer just to make sure.

The mantel we wanted originally. No wonder it was already sold!

So we made our way through the yard again, to examine some of the other beauties, but nothing was quite as grand.  We did find a couple suitable options of the dining room and den, however.

We came back to the house somewhat bummed...and then I did what any human born after 1980 would do: I looked online.  And thank goodness for craigslist because what I did I see just a few rows into the listings, but an early 1900's columned mantel for - get this - $300 measly dollars.  HOLLER!  And it was fully restored.  And it had beautiful detailing.  And the man was available for us to pick it up that day.  So we drove out to Dickson that afternoon and found our first good treasure! 

(Another side note: on the way we passed about a dozen antique and secondhand shops saying things like "Historic Treasures" and "Unique Closet Finds," at which point my mother and I decided that they should all just state the truth - just a sign with the arrow reading "Somebody's Old Shit."  Wouldn't stop me!)

"Dar he." (Does anybody get that reference?  Anybody?)

 

 The man we bought it from said the thing "was pretty light."  He lied.  Or maybe he wasn't thinking from the perspective of a little lady.

And there he is with Mom, looking just fantastic, the both of them!  This is where he'll be once we, you know, get the walls up.