Origins

After I moved into my house, I opened a cupboard and found a small framed photo of an elderly couple. Also an elderly case of Milwaukee's Best. I'm still perplexed by the beer, but a little sleuthing revealed that the folks in the photo were the original owners of the home. To the best of my knowledge, they were here from 1939 until 2005, when the owner prior to me bought the house. So just three families have lived here in all those years. I hope, sometime, to glean some stories from days gone by.

But speculating about the house's history reminds me that most of the objects I moved in to fill the empty rooms have their own tales. Few of my household goods were new when they came to me; there are hand-me-downs from family members and lots of "pre-owned" purchases from Craigslist, garage sales, and thrift stores. (Or a used-car lot and an animal rescue operation, in the case of my pre-owned car and dog.) Since I haven't yet gleaned any interesting house stories, I thought I'd trace the origins of some of what's inside.
First, a glance around the living room reveals:
Couch, chair, and ottoman - At $100, this comfy set was one heckuva Craigslist deal back in DC. Of course, I had to orchestrate transport to my apartment in Reston and then to Michigan.
Corner bookshelf - A pile of basement left-behinds in my rented house in Stevens Point included this handmade creation. My roommate Rori and I were both partial to it, but at the last moment she didn't have room to take it. So I've now carted it with me everywhere I've lived since then.
Braided rugs - Hand-me-downs from my parents, these were the rugs in our dining room when I was growing up.
Coffee table - Decades ago, my grandfather bought some slabs of walnut from someone who was cutting down a tree near Toledo. He made several into coffee tables - my parents have had one since before I was born. He left an additional slab and some legs, already bent into shapely curves, unfinished. This fall, my dad and I turned the pieces into a table, and I sanded it all smooth, stained, oiled, and waxed it, and have now installed it in a place of honor.

















Now a peek into the dining room:
Hutch - After one of my unsuccessful househunting trips last fall, I picked up this sturdy hutch in Elk Rapids via Craigslist. Lacking an outlet for my fixing-up-a-house inclinations, I focused them on refurbishing. The hutch had been painted with horrible fake-wood-grain paint, so sanding it down to reveal the real oak grain was very sawdusty, but extremely satisfying!
Table and chairs - Another DC Craigslist purchase, and another fall refinishing project. Funny, it very much resembles the dining room table I grew up with...
Hanging lamp - My aunt and uncle had this lamp in their first house. They didn't have a place for it after that, and gave it to my parents, who also failed to find the perfect location. I think I found it now, though!

The kitchen is another essential stop on the origins tour:
Dishes - This is a motley assortment of things. Much came from local thrift and antique shops; hence the conglomeration. A few blue-and-green orphans are the remains of a set my mom collected for me by saving up stamps from Oleson's grocery store. Alas, the rest of that family met a sad fate when the bottom dropped out of a box as I was moving out of my first apartment. Meanwhile, the matching white-with-blue-stripe set was once my aunt and uncle's
everyday dishes; my aunt, on a clean-out crusade, took me "shopping" in her attic recently, where I acquired these and a little white crock perfectly suited to holding scraps headed for my composting worms.
Chest - This was left behind by the first owners of my parents' house and has been hanging out in their basement bathroom for the 12 years they've lived there. It looks like it was originally intended for a kitchen - it has a metal-lined drawer that my mom says resembles the one where they kept flour in her childhood home - and I think it's enjoying being back in the middle of the action again.















Kitchen table, etc. - This corner of the kitchen is my ad for the local building salvage, Odom Re-Use Company. That's where I bought the shelf, which joined my list of fall refinishing projects. On a later trip with my parents, we admired the butcher blocks that Dale was crafting out of old maple door jambs salvaged from Holy Childhood school in Harbor Springs. Not being in the market for such a thing, we carried on - until my attention was caught by a set of four table legs near the checkout counter. I bought the legs without a specific project in mind, but back home, we got to thinking that the legs, affixed to one of those butcher blocks, could solve my kitchen table dilemma. So the next morning, back we went to Odom. The price tag was higher than my other Odom purchases, but it did make for a lovely table. Dale had some additional wood slats which Dad and I planed down and used to build an apron to hide the leg brackets. Now that I've cleaned up the legs and oiled and waxed the whole thing, it's well-suited to its new role. Meanwhile, my mom fixed up the black chair back when she lived in her first apartment, and the stools are another DC Craigslist purchase and fall refinishing project.

This really just scratches the surface. Upstairs, the list continues: various other Craigslist scores, including the table I'm using for an office desk and two futons (one of which was free from a not-so-handy fellow in DC, whose ad said "if you can figure out how to take it apart, you can have it"); a set of wooden boxes-that-become-shelves that my Dad and I built many moves ago; and a little wooden chest with tiny drawers from my other grandfather's workshop, among other things.

My small jungle of houseplants has some history, too. It's true, some were simply purchased - I have a bit of a weakness for greenery. But the spider plant was rescued from a curb in Minneapolis where it was wearing a "free" sign, along with siblings now dwelling on opposite coasts with friends Jess and Emily. The sprawling schefflera started as cuttings from Halle in DC, and so did the begonia. The crazy-spiky one and the snakeplant were offspring from Emily and Dom's plant collection, which they were paring down for a cross-country move. The jade I've had since college; I chopped it mercilessly before my own move, and now it is positively thriving. The smaller jade was a cutting from my Aunt Fran. Aunt Pat gave me another spiky succulent offspring as a housewarming gift - it was the first official photosynthesizing resident of the house.

I could go on and on, but I'll wrap it up before this post becomes an epic. Want the rest of the tour? Come visit!