Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the thirteenth day of the month is "Failure."
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Five years ago, we moved into our house and I scoured estate sales and antique stores to find a few pieces of furniture, including a couple of cedar chests. Our house is old and has very few closets and so storage space was crucial. Then, in 2021, I broke down and bought a sideboard for our kitchen after being annoyed by an IKEA bookcase we'd had in there for years.
Anyway. I'm only reminding you of these purchases because Dr. BB's grandmother has recently been moved into a nursing home and I was very displeased to hear that among the items of furniture the family is trying to dispose of include FOUR cedar chests and a sideboard. *heavy sigh* Just for record, we are bringing two of those cedar chests home. We might replace one of the chests we bought in 2017 if we can't find space for all of them.
We're also getting this:
This curio cabinet belonged to my husband's grandfather's grandfather, so we here are. We'll be bringing it home next week.
The problem is that we have an old house and everyone in both of our families think we want all the old furniture and we DO, but we are officially out of space at this point. No more furniture!
What's the oldest piece of furniture in your house?
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To see what Bestest Friend has to say about failure, go see her at Too Legit to Quit.
We source as many things as we can second-hand, but wood furniture (or good furniture in general) is hard to find, especially because we only have a sedan and can't pick up a giant bookcase that's already put together. When we moved from our old apartment we had very little to bring with us to furnish a home and had to buy a lot of bigger items new. For the most part, we went with IKEA products and have been so happy with almost everything sourced from there!
ReplyDeleteAs for the oldest item...that would be my son's homemade bed frame. My dad made it with a carpenter friend of his when I was about 5 and I used it all through my childhood. My parents stored it in their garage for YEARS and we inherited it once we bought a house. I really love it, though it's not fine craftmanship by any means, but it's solid pine and brings back good memories since it was crafted with love by people I know.
We have a compact sedan and a wagon that's not particularly big, so I feel you on the transportation issues. We've rented UHauls, borrowed SUVs, and begged people to lend us pickup trucks to get our furniture. I feel like there's plenty of good wood furniture available in antique stores around here, so I feel pretty lucky about that.
DeleteWe have our fair share of IKEA products, particularly bookcases, but they're not really our style and they don't really move well, so after having been moved from Minneapolis to Wisconsin and then another move to our house, some of those IKEA products just aren't looking awesome. We have four IKEA bookshelves and I'd love to replace all of them, but it's not really in the budget right now.
I have my grandmother's huge Honduran mahogany dining room table (four leaves!) and six chairs. The table is nice and sturdy, but the chairs are done in the spindly Regency style, and they're starting to fail. My husband keeps repairing them, but every time someone of size sits down, I hold my breath.
ReplyDeleteIt just may be (past) time to replace the chairs, period.
Yes, it might be time to retire the chairs, sadly. You really don't want Uncle Bill to sit down on a chair and fall to the ground at Thanksgiving!
DeleteOld houses are great if you can do the maintenance to keep them up. Or have the funds to pay for the needed care.
ReplyDeleteEh. I don't know that our house is much more maintenance than a modern one. It was built to last!
DeleteI have nothing old in my apartment! The oldest thing is probably my bed frame that's only, like, 12 years old. HA. My cousin has some of my grandparents' and great-grandparents' older furniture, but we're not a very sentimental family that cares too much about stuff like that. Like, she could have give that stuff away and I wouldn't even care! I mean, who knows - she may have done so already and I'd be like "Eh. Fine."
ReplyDeleteOh, wow! I have a high chair that my grandfather's grandfather made and we have furniture my parents purchased when they first got married. I'm not really sentimental about it, but the furniture is just better made than anything being made to today that I could afford. I love thinking about the stories our furniture could tell!
DeleteI have a chair that was my grandma's, and a tiny dresser/ cubby that was mine when I was small but also came from the farm my mom grew up on, so I think it's those two things!
ReplyDeleteA tiny dresser! I would love to see it.
DeleteOne thing that was offered to us was a child's desk that my husband has very fond memories of from when he was little, but we have no room nor a small child, but I could tell it broke my husband's heart to say no to it.
Oooooh what a beautiful curio cabinet! Great find. I bet it is so comforting to people when their beloved furniture items find homes with family members.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what the oldest piece of furniture in our house is. We have SO MUCH handmedown furniture. So much. Maybe it's the kitchen table, which was my husband's kitchen table when he was growing up? Or we have a tall cabinet -- I guess it is a sideboard and hutch combo maybe? Or a really wide curio cabinet? I don't know; my husband's family calls it The Piece -- that belonged to my husband's family and I think maybe his mom's family before that.
My husband's aunts are THRILLED we're taking it. It makes me happy to make them happy and there was no way I was letting that cabinet leave the family. My husband is one of sixteen grandchildren, though, and I can't believe we're the ones who are lucky enough to get it!
DeleteThe Piece. I love how it has its own capitalization!
We recently cleared out my mother's house and found 7 school desks from the early 1900s. We have those, along with some tables, chairs, and a hutch stored in our garage while I figure out what to do with it all! We incorporated a lot of the antiques when my folks sold their house years ago, but my guy has put up a (deserved) boundary around bringing more "in", haha!
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I'd be curious to know what you end up doing with those desks!
Deletewell... I'm sure the furniture is beautiful. Is it your style though? We have two large pieces of furniture in our house that my husband's father built years ago. For that reason, we can never get rid of them. I would prefer to have something else, but my husband loves them. Even older than that though is a dictionary stand that came from my parents' house. And it has a very large dictionary on it. My kids think it's the strangest thing- WHY would you use an actual dictionary when you can just use your phone? I spent my entire childhood looking up words in that dictionary, so it has sentimental value to me (although I admit I never actually use it either anymore.) I'm pretty sure my kids will be dumping it in the trash someday.
ReplyDeleteOh, it's absolutely my style. They had been telling us about the cabinet and I was sort of rolling my eyes, but as soon as I walked in the door, I knew we'd take it home. I would take all four of the cedar chests, the curio cabinet, the child's desk, and the television stand that were available if we had space! I think my husband's grandmother and I had the same taste in furniture.
DeleteA dictionary stand! That would have been an unusual piece even when you and I were growing up! I'd be interested in knowing all about the history of it. Why did your parents have it? That's fascinating.
My oldest piece is probably the desk I'm sitting at; I got it about 25 years ago, from Goodwill, and who knows how old it actually is? I love old furniture, solid wood is the best.
ReplyDeleteYou can't beat a desk that's been around the block, right? It's the plot of the mediocre book The Great House by Nicole Krauss. I didn't love that book, but I still think about that desk.
DeleteI've got quite a few pieces of furniture that have been handed down through the family - the perks of being a third generation only child. I think the oldest goes back to the 1890's and the rest is early 1910's when my great grandparents were furnishing their homes. Gotta love the old school - they didn't have built in storage because they had such gorgeous furniture to store their stuff in.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! And since our house is old school, we need all those gorgeous pieces of furniture to make up for the lack of closets!
DeleteThat curio cabinet is beautiful! I would love to have something like that, but ...kids. They are why we can't have nice stuff. A lot of our furniture is from my Husband's family. (My parents immigrated to this country, so we don't have furniture from that side.) The kids' dresser and desk was his when he was growing up. Our kitchen chairs belonged to his grandmother and are over 100 years old. I think one of my favorite pieces is an old wooden ice chest that we use to store photo albums.
ReplyDeleteOh, man, I think about how that curio cabinet survived my husband's grandmother's five children and her thirteen grandchildren and think you could probably have a curio cabinet, too! They're tougher than we think!
DeleteI also like the curio cabinet you are getting. We have a couple of pieces that came with the house when we bought it like a mid century bookshelf and a display cabinet. We bought our dining table from Craigslist and that is maybe from the 40s? I don't have a real sense of how old the 2nd hand furniture is exactly. I still have my old bedroom furniture which is probably from before 1900. It's from my great aunts family and I probably took off 6 layers of paint when I took it over. It's in Germany and my heart aches thinking about the fact that it's way expensive to ship it over here as I have to decide what to do with it this summer.
ReplyDeleteWow. That piece is so lovely. And having furniture with such a rich family history is pretty amazing. I understand about 'trying to fit it all in' too. Are you going to be at that house forever? If not, I'd put some in storage for the time being. But, if this is your forever home, that will be an issue.
ReplyDeleteThe oldest thing we have is the Rocker that my Mom rocked both my brother and I in. Nothing as old as what you are working with.
I mean, we're going to be at this house for the foreseeable future. Never say never, of course, but I don't want to move ever again, so...it has to fit or we can't bring it in. I'm not okay with putting furniture in the basement as storage - I want it to be used or out of here!
DeleteOh, did you use that rocker with your own kids? That's a wonderful family tradition.
Oh boy, we don't have any old furniture in our house, I think. It's kinda sad. Old pieces do have a lovely touch.
ReplyDeleteWow! I'm really surprised to hear that so many people have all new furniture. I just don't think we could have afforded to furnish our house with new stuff!
DeleteOh, no, it's not all brand-new furniture in my house at all. A lot of second-hand stuff and Ikea... it's just not beautiful old furniture like the stuff that you're being handed ;)
DeleteThe oldest piece of furniture is a pretty ugly arm chair in our basement that my MIL got at a garage sale. I wanted to get rid of it, but we don't have anywhere to sit in our basement so we kept it for now. Otherwise, everything was purchased over the last 5-10 years. Most of our stuff came from IKEA or Wayfair so they weren't expensive pieces. But it's not the season of life to really invest in furniture with our young kids. My favorite thing we own is our huge dining room table from IKEA. It has 2 leaves that store inside the table. We usually only use one leaf when having people over but when we have my family over, we need both leaves - plus another table for some of the kids. It has held up shockingly well - it's been through 5 moves, I think!
ReplyDeleteWhen my grandmother moved out of her house, they could not find a home for a lot of her furniture, like her dining room table. I don't know what they ended up doing with it - they probably gave it away or took it to goodwill or something like that.
Yes, we also have some IKEA furniture, but I just don't think it holds up all that well, so I'm impressed to hear that your table has survived so much! Nicely done, you!
DeleteI don't want to make it seem like we invest in any pieces! The reason I'm going to antique stores and estate sales is because the prices I'm paying are about the same as if we HAD purchased from Wayfair or IKEA, but I'm generally getting better quality items, your dining room table notwithstanding!
Oldest piece of furniture = a ... cabinet? I guess? We've always called it a "dresser". Anyway, it's a relic from my marriage and belonged to my ex's family. We kind of just kept what we had - he doesn't mind that I have it, and I need it and love it. Grew up with all old furniture - my parents' house is very appropriate for it - and have always loved the idea of furnishing my eventual home with older stuff that has more character. I am so glad you are taking ownership of these beautiful pieces. :)
ReplyDelete