New Treasure

I haven’t been on a ladder in three days now, and it feels kind of good. I was due for a break and the weather supplied me with one. It never really rained that much, but it was enough that I couldn’t work on scraping or painting the house. Tomorrow, though, I’m back at it.

I want to get in full days both Saturday and Sunday. The first floor siding in Section 5 is scraped and puttied, so most of this weekend will be dedicated to the second floor siding. That means, it’s back on the ladder for me. I’m getting a little tired of the ladder, but I’ve just got to do it.

Today I bought a little cabinet down at my favorite antique/salvage place, Empire Furniture. It is mostly redwood, and pretty old. I’m not sure what it was originally, but it was modified to become an armoire. Here’s a picture of it.



The doors are not original, they are fir, and it looks as though it didn’t have doors originally because there are no mortises for hinges. The hinges for the doors that are on there now aren’t even mortised in to the cabinet. Even so, the doors, door hardware, and hinges are pretty old themselves. If I had to guess, judging from the style and hardware, I would say the cabinet is over 100 years old and the doors were added sometime in the 20s.

I’m going to use it was a TV armoire in the front parlor. It’s in pretty good shape, but it does need some work. The shellac is alligatoring in places, and one of the hinges is being held on by nails, and the doors don’t really close right because of that. All in all, though, it’s a nice little cabinet and the TV fits in there perfectly.

I went in to Empire Furniture a few weeks back and saw another redwood armoire type cabinet, but it was ridiculously over-priced so I didn’t even ask about it. When I start the downstairs remodel I want to be able to close up the electronics to help keep dust at bay. That is the main reason to buy something now. I went back in yesterday and asked Sheri, the owner about it. I wanted to see how much she could come down on it. Prices are rarely chiseled in stone at this place.

We walked back to the cabinet and I asked her, “What’s your best price you can give me on this?”. I got that line from one of the appraisers on Antiques Roadshow. Sheri told me the best prices was the price marked because it was a consignment item. She admitted it was over-priced, but she couldn’t bargain with me on it. She then told me there was another redwood cabinet I might be interested in.

We walked to the other side of the store where she pointed out the cabinet above. I liked it immediately. As many of you may know, here in Eureka, if it’s old and made of redwood, it’s most likely made locally, which means I’m interested. It is smaller than the first one I saw, so I started measuring to make sure my TV would fit. I needed a minimum opening of 27-inches and this is 27.5-inches. It’s just perfect.

When it came time to talk about price I didn’t have to haggle. As I’ve mentioned before, Sheri is my neighbor, and I’ve bought from her many times. When she gives me her best price it is not a starting point for negotiations. The price she gave me was 45% below the price on the tag. I said, “Sold!” and got my checkbook. A year from now, when the parlor is finished, it should look nice in there.