Another day, another auction

On the weekend, my husband and I went to a preview at a new-to-us auction house.  I've been getting extremely fed up with Skinner, my usual haunt.  So many rules and policies that make it difficult to preview and bid, combined with plenty of competition for the good stuff.  In their last auction, a glitch in the computer bidding system locked me out of bidding up to my maximum on an item that sold for way less - and they were rude and utterly unhelpful in resolving the problem when I called to point it out.  The interaction left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

I didn't go to the new auction house with high hopes but I was pleasantly surprised.  First of all, they actually seem to want to facilitate viewing, registration and bidding.  Basic, but a revelation after my years frequenting and buying from Skinner.  Second, there were definitely gems among the reproduction furniture and ho-hum paintings and some of the lots went for tiny sums, well under their estimates. 

Unfortunately that wasn't the case for the two lots I bid on and won.  The first is a pair of 19th century English oak candlesticks.  They're 19" tall, so pretty substantial:

I love the idea of them with beeswax tapers, for a handmade eco-chic look.

The second lot was a chaise lounge.  Over the years, I've swung back and forth between two diametrically opposed views of chaise lounges.  As young twenty-something, I loved them.  How could a young woman not? So feminine!  So elegant!  So fancy-European-from-the gilded-past!  But then I became firmly anti-chaise, and for some of the same reasons.  But it wasn't really the frilly associations that changed my mind; from the point of view of a city dweller with limited space, they seem so unpractical.  They're really hard to wrangle into upholstered chair groupings in small rooms and on their own they eat up a lot of space and are less flexible and multi-purpose than a chair-plus-ottoman.

But as you know, we've been struggling with the seating arrangement in the headhouse.  It is such a small space with such awkward dimensions and I simply *must* have something on which to really spread out and, well, lounge.  So say hello to our other weekend auction acquisition:

Reader, I must confess that I spent far too much: far more than such cumbersome pieces can be had for on Craigslist, for example.  Unfortunately I had my heart set on it.  The scale and dimensions are perfect - not giant-sized like so many new versions.  The down cushion is exactly the right combo of firm and yielding and the soft cotton William Morris-style fabric goes with the room (and my taste, even if it's not exactly what I'd pick given carte blanche).  Put that together with the fact that we've been looking for so long and another person bidding hungrily and (may I say) a bit crazily against me and my hope for a bargain was shattered.  Now re-covering it is not in my budget's future and I will have to invest some energy in giving the skirt especially a very thorough shampoo.  If that's unsuccessful, then the skirt will have to go.  But sprawling in the chaise in the living room this afternoon (that's as far as we had time to carry it this morning), the sunlight streaming in, the darn chaise seems worth every penny.

Some recent furniture purchases

I've made a few furniture purchases for the red brick building over the past two months and wanted to share some pictures. 

When we were in Savannah for our wedding - the afternoon we were married actually - we spent a couple of delicious hours browsing one of our very favorite antique stores, Alex Raskin Antiques.  If you are ever in Savannah, you absolutely must go!  It's in a historic mansion on the corner of one of their beautiful garden squares.  The entire building is crammed full of antique furniture, some of it stacked one piece on top of the other.  And it's all in a state of picturesque decay - the phrase "faded grandeur" comes immediately to mind - and that's just about my favorite aesthetic. 

Naturally, it being our wedding day, we had the perfect excuse to succumb to a lovely piece or two. We chose an early nineteenth century mahogany tall chest, with a beautiful shell inlay and original ornate brass hardware.  The wood is somewhat faded so it doesn't have that burgundy color that mahogany usually does. 

It's going in our bedroom beside the glass wall.  We desperately need more drawer space for clothes and I love the idea of having something we bought on our wedding day in our bedroom and using it every day.  (Full disclosure: we first saw the chest nearly two years ago on a Valentine's Day trip to Savannah, really liked it them but worried that it was too splurgy.)

We also bought a very large eighteenth century walnut French Provincial armoire to go on the right side of the fireplace (the grand piano is on the left).  We liked its simple lines and its workhorse stature.  Oh, the quantity of files, papers and hopefully printer/fax/scanner that it will store!

The color in the second photo is more representative - no reddish tones.  There was another storage piece that we really like but no matter how many times we measured and no matter how many ways we mentally rearranged our furniture, we decided we just don't have the space for.  If only my stepdaughter's bedroom was a foot bigger!

Shifting gears, in November I caved and ordered the Turned Wood Bistro Table from West Elm.  It's totally unlike me, because I really can't stand most mass produced wood furniture, but I really wanted at least one round table in the red brick building and was having a difficult time finding anything round and antique but also unusual.

I really like that the table has a modern, sculptural quality, without feeling harsh.  The curviness works well with much of the rest of the house and I like the warmth and light hue of the unfinished mango wood, as a break from dark wood.  The purchase was far from hassle free, though.  The table comes in two pieces and they're supposed to send bolts and washers to secure the top to the base.  These were not included in my package and it has literally taken them almost two months to send the eight missing pieces.  That's a long time to wait while using (and cursing) a rickety table.  In the end, the table's not an heirloom but for the time being it serves its purpose as an unexpected and fun piece.

My most recent purchase was at auction yesterday.  It's a silvered brass fender for our fireplace: 

A bit of a splurge (who really *needs* a fireplace fender?), but hopefully a detail that will make our frequent fires even more beautiful and the hearth look more finished.

Catching up with Christmas photos

Hello and please pardon my long-ish absence.  Many factors contributed:  1) I got married in December, 2) had a house guest for several days before Christmas, 3) Christmas, 4) I needed a break from working on the red brick building and 5) the pace of tasks being completed has slowed and as of the day before Christmas, I no longer have "company" here every day.  (Best. Christmas. Present. Ever!.)
I do want to post the photos I promised of the Christmas decorations in place on the RBB's facade.  I hope you enjoy them, even if we are past the season.  (I'm now trying to decide when to take them down.)

I also did a display of white impatiens and azaleas in birch bark cachepots, just inside the building's front door.  Unfortunately, we've been having problems with our heating (don't ask) and I had to move them to a warmer spot after a couple of weeks.   Before the move:

Amazingly, they're all still going just as strong in the living room and kitchen as the day I brought them home from the garden center nearly two months ago.  Really happy with the bang for my bucks and planning a variation on the theme next year.

Insanely overly-ambitious Christmas decorations

I wanted to add something to the "collection" of homemade Christmas decorations I began last year with a gold-painted square pine cone wreath.  I really like this image from, who else, Martha Stewart, so I decided to pay her the most sincere form of flattery.

Heaven forbid I should ever do anything by half measures. Instead of making a pair of window boxes as a sane person would, I decided that the right number would be, oh, about eight.  (My hare-brained math was one for each end of the balcony and two for each of the three panels along the length of the balcony.)  The first box took me and my extremely supportive fiance over three hours to make.  (This was after I sourced and ordered the perfect window boxes, stocked up on wire and floral foam, and we drove way out of the city, picked through and lugged home the perfect branches and greens).  Here are some photos of the actual building process:

Then ta-da, our first-born:

Admittedly, the other boxes went a bit more quickly (2 hours each) as we learned some technique.  He helped with two more and his daughters helped with one, and then I put my head down day after day for the rest of the week and churned 'em out.

Then they sat sadly on the balcony while I waited for the white ribbon I had decided on to arrive.  (Maybe I should have stuck with the gold after all?)  Apparently nobody sells wide white velvet ribbon, even at Christmas-time, so I ended up with satin.  Shipping cost a fortune and took an eternity, ie. one week.  As soon as it arrived yesterday, I bowed.  Then the workers came this morning and hung the boxes despite monsoon conditions.  I promise photos when it stops raining.

Another photo update of the cabinet for the master bedroom closet

Oh, if only you knew how eager I am to finally unpack my clothes, shoes, handbags, etc.!  The suspense of waiting for the closet cabinetry to be done is terrible.  Today, I received the following tantalizing image of the giant built-in piece:

 

My flowery antique French gesso mirror will rest on the ledge on the front, so you won't see those planks that run vertically.  Incidentally, the lower section will have five thin black velvet-lined drawers for lingerie, hosiery and perhaps jewelry.  These are the cast iron pulls I ordered for the drawers below the mirror:

The sections that V off to the side (which will have additional adjustable shelves) are for folded pants and tops.  They're hinged to let us access the space behind the mirror from either side.  That's storage space for out of season items.  Clearly some free-standing chests of drawers/armoires are needed in the bedroom proper, since there's no way that level of shelving (divided by two) is enough.  Hello antique chests-as-bedside-tables and very tall armoire for our one reasonably-wide wall.

I am so eager for the walk-in to become less of a dumping ground that I made a trip to the Container Store yesterday and bought many ultra-thin black velvet hangers, plus some U-shaped pieces of clear acrylic to keep my handbags upright on the shelf that's being built for them.  I then spent two hours transferring clothes from my motley assortment of old plastic and wood hangers onto the svelte new ones.  I'm still not done (I need more with clips for skirts), plus I need to make a decision about my huge cardigan collection: whether to fold and place on shelves (as all closet gurus counsel) or whether to hang (as I now do), which makes them feel more accessible.  Folding would probably be optimal but since there is not a single shelf in the room at the moment, they will have to stay put on their less than beautiful hangers for the time being.

In-progress photos of the master bedroom closet built-in

The cabinet-maker sent me some photos of the built-in he's working on for our master bedroom's walk-in closet.

He's coming on Monday morning to finish off the kitchen built-ins and install the two bookcases.  Yay!

Our first fire

We had our first fire in the fireplace last night.  We'd been waiting for some black firebox paint I ordered over the internet.  Our poor painter was nearly asphixiated by the fumes, but he returned the next day with a respirator mask and did a great job.  We're still discussing the idea of staining the mantel (it was the above yellowish color when we got it from the architectural salvage place).  And of course, we need to find a couple of cozy armchairs to angle in front of the fireplace, perhaps with that round pedestal West Elm table between 'em.