Monday, July 9, 2007

Serendipity

We had another productive weekend on the junk removal front. N & A (actually a different N & A than the ones we've mentioned before) came over and hauled stuff (some of it very heavy, including two cedar chests and a sewing machine) down the rickety steps and out onto the side lawn for sorting.

Firstly and most importantly (to me), we found this, the reason for the title of my post:



The red vase is one I've had for over a decade. I got it from my great-grandfather's house after he passed away. The green one? Was in a box in the attic of this house. Neat, huh? I realize they're not anything really special, but I'm pretty stoked about my newly matched (and Yule-ish) pair of little vases.

Back to the lawn --





-- where we sorted things into junk, nifty, and possible sale/salvage piles. Being a bit of a magpie myself (uh-oh), I had to save a few things from being junked, like the ice skates, a little wooden tray, and a strange metal clock-lamp shaped like the hull of a ship. (I did not keep the wig.)

It was really difficult for me to allow the tons of vintage curtains to go...but neat as they are, they're not at all to my taste and I would never consider using them. A woman stopped by and claimed some of them along with a few 50s style chairs and about 10 cans of Zud.



I can only hope the rest of it wll be taken before the next storm, as I don't think little rivers of Zud flowing down the street will endear us to the neighbors.

Some of the really nifty things we found were a couple of old pictures that had our house in them. So we have a small shot of what the front of our house used to look like before the POs added their strange little room, one of our side yard, and one of our cherry tree 23 years ago when it was still only 4 feet tall.

This is how our attic looked at the end of the day:



Admittedly, I'm not posting a photo of the other end of the attic, which still has a big box pile and the 4 foot stuffed Snoopy... but this is nonetheless amazing when compared with the attic before. :D Now we can actually check out the insulation and wiring up there and look for water damage from the previously leaky roof.

And then! A man stopped by this evening and took away all of our dirty, stinky baseboard heater covers! Wow!

4 comments:

Muskego Jeff said...

"A man stopped by this evening and took away all of our dirty, stinky baseboard heater covers! Wow!"

Probably for scrap metal value. With prices as high as they are it wouldn't surprise me. I had a 40 year old sump pump and 8 feet of metal dryer tubing disappear overnight for what I bet is the same reason.

Suileeka said...

re: scrap metal

That is indeed what he wanted it for.

Sometimes I'd like things to 'disappear', but I realize at the same thing that it would disturb me greatly if someone just stole the stuff from our property.

Muskego Jeff said...

Oh, mine wasn't stolen, I put it out for trash pickup the night before the trash was to be picked up and it was gone the next morning. Junk that people may want I put off to the side so it's visible to people driving by.

Jessy said...

Oh man, the getting rid of phase. Everything you throw away gets easier and easier, I promise...and it just gets more fun after that.