Housecleaning

This was my Dad's desk. Nobody wanted/could take it when Mom moved, and Hubs thought it was too fine to put curbside, so we brought it home and stuck it in a corner of #1's already crowded bedroom. This summer he got the idea to get rid of the television in the grey room (which used to be the playroom when daughters were little) and also the television stand. We did, and Dad's desk now sits there. I washed it, organized the drawers into #1's drawer, Vasseur, Holmes and Moore drawers and a stuff drawer. Where I am going to put my empty camera boxes and Gramp M's scrapbooks, I do not know. Yet. 

After I washed it, I polished it with Circa 1850 Furniture Cleaner. It's not really that old, but it smells that old, in a good, wood polish way. Now it has a nice shine and smell. One-eyed Ted E Bear sits on the 1800s Snider chair that I had recaned. Thank you Uncle Billy and Aunt Maggie. I put my furniture polish on the dryer, covered with the rag I used to polish the wood. I pushed it aside to make room, right next to the new-to-me doily I got at Mrs. Milburn's moving out of apartment sale. Now, what do you think doily smells like? I like the smell, but not on the doily. 

I organized the desktop, but it will have to change, for we are putting up the white shelf from the kitchen at 9 Wellington over the desk, and the oil lamp and flowers are too tall. The oil lamp probably came from the farm, but I don't remember for sure. I picked up the clay inkwell at the antique shop, but Mom said there used to be lots of them at the farm. Wonder where they went. I purchased the feather pen at Kings Landing. The pen is a repurposed bobbin. Did you know I love old bobbins? Some of you will remember the basket from the desk in the parlor at the farm. The flowers (from Michaels) are in an old bottle. We found two or three old boxes of bottles in the basement when Mom moved and Paul, Pat and I divvied them up. This one has a greenish tinge and is from Rowat & Co, Glasgow. "Riverbank Visitors" and an old pair of glasses from the farm sit there, ready for Ted to read. The items in the back sit on doilies: one from the Vasseur house, one I made, and two I rescued.

#1's room and the grey room are still in a shambles, but I love my desk. I look forward to the white shelf, but I don't know where I'll put that oil lamp where it will be safe. It comes in handy, once in a while. Can you imagine living in an era (not so long ago - my Mom did) where there was no electicity, no ball point pens, and medicine and other scarey stuff came in these old bottles? And wearing Harry Potter glasses like these?