Restoration

 

We have lived in the same house for the past 28 years. (yikes!) That is sort of accurate, because the house isn't the same as it was when we moved in.  We have altered each and every room over the years - knocking down walls, extending small rooms, letting the light in and even putting a room in the roof.  So we have lived in the same home for 28 years, but the house is not really the same.  It has changed as our needs have changed.  And being practical people we do most of the work ourselves.  It is my job to look after all the wood, so I sand and revarnish doors and windows every now and then.  

The whole time we have lived here, my bedroom windows have irked me.  When we bought the house all those years ago, they had been varnished with a red stain,  but as they were perfectly functional letting in light and air and opening and closing efficiently, sanding them back down to wood and revarnishing with clear varnish was always at the bottom of the To-do list.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided enough is enough.  If I didn't tackle the job now, it is highly probable that the irksome windows would stay as is for the next home owners.  To be fair, I have sanded and varnished the outside of them several times, so they look fine.  It was just the inside I hadn't got round to because a) it is a schlepp and b) being in our bedroom, not too many people saw them.

The schleppy bit is the dust created by the orbital sander, and the difficulty of access because of the burglar bars.  There are four windows that needed sanding, and so on a mild day, I unscrewed the hinges from the frame of one, removed the handle, prised off the beading to remove the glass and  plugged in my faithful orbital sander (grit 80 to remove the stain, 100 to get a smooth finish on the wood.)  But I was not having a great week.  My head space was fuzzy, and my mood was not improved by the appearance of a small crack in the glass as the last piece of beading came off.  Sigh.  I knew the crack would run, so I bashed the glass out - no need for delicate handling any more - and headed to a glass supplier to get a new pane (and an extra one in case I made another mistake....), off the hardware store for putty and hinges and then back to the task at hand.  

The wood is beautiful.  Once the veneer was off, the grain stood out, and the earthy brown colour made my heart sing.  I get a real buzz out of restoring wood and this was very satisfying.  Over the years I have got better at glazing and managed to put in the new glass and beading with no more hiccoughs. And, before night fall I had hung the window - admittedly with only one of the three coats of varnish it needs (Woodoc Marine Gloss ( rated 5 * on the Wendy Varnish Scale)) - with the help of my daughter. 

It took just a day to replace the window I hated for 28 years with one I love.  I just needed the determination to start (and energy.)

I tackled the second pane a few days later.  Two more to go.

I don't think I am alone at leaving what is important to us personally at the bottom of the to-do list.  There are always more pressing needs. As long as the  front of my house (so to speak) was presentable, I could put off working on  the difficult-to-get-to inside bits. But I have found that once the old veneer has been removed, the grain and patterns of my life look more authentic and hold a beauty of their own.  Life still needs varnish though, just as my windows do, to protect from harsh conditions and the outside world, but a transparent one will do.  

Removing layers of history is hard work and messy.  But every morning when I look out of my "new"  window, I see the world in a different light. I get a warm fuzzy feeling that I have changed something that has been bothering me for years.

 

 

 

On the shelf

 

.Most Mondays I wish we embraced minimalism more as a family.  That is because Monday is dusting day, and we seem to have a lot of Stuff.  I am lucky enough to work from home (I was a trend setter way before Covid made us all work from home!), so I can juggle my different roles according to need.  Usually the greatest need on a Monday morning is cleaning the house.  We dirty hard over weekends.  Some Mondays I grumble round the house,  dusting only the worst of it.  Housework is dull, repetitive and never ending. Other days, I take a more mindful approach, and use the exercise to examine how lucky we are to have all that we have when people survive with so little.  Today I took the Memory approach - spending a little time thinking about why we have the trinkets we have on display, and how the moment that led us to acquiring them, has shaped our lives.  

See exhibit A : The Shelf.

 

What a collection of treasures!  Where to start!  There are 2 containers of stones (near each end).  They are just ordinary pebbles and stones with absolutely no apparent special features.  But actually, they are a collection of a path we travelled in 2010 when we went overseas as a family.  Most of the stones were collected by our then 7 year old daughter, mostly on Hampstead Heath and other bits of London.  Some came from Paris and Rome, and were brought home in a steadily heavier backpack she carried all over Europe with her.  So many memories of paths travelled, some angsty times (another blog maybe) and of our earth moving experience.

The pottery hippopotamus is called Art.  It has no function at all except to look beautiful.  We were at that stage of our marriage where things needed a purpose, as the budget was tight.  A bit sheepishly, I gave it to Andrew and told him it was Art.  He returned the favour with the carved Hoepoe - a bird we associate with the beauty of Sedgefield, and many happy family holidays.

There are quite a few items our Son has brought us from his overseas trips - a tea pot and cups (centre) from Thailand.  Silver looking goblets which are wooden, coated in tin, from Argentina.  A leather decorative Yurt from Kazakhstan. Maths and Computer programming olympiads have taken him all over the world, and we are lucky enough to have some reminders of his full passport.

The tall blue candle sticks were found in Barrydale on a road trip we did a few years ago.  Andrew loved the colour and shape, and what more do you need to add it to a collection of memories.  I can't look at them without remembering the massive milkshakes at Diesel and Creme in Barrydale, or the rest of the trip including a rather wonderful pottery in Robertson.

I won't bore you with the rest - suffice to say that shelf carries a load of Important Stuff with absolutely no monetary value at all.  Aliens or house redecorators would throw it all out without a backwards glance, not realizing the true wealth that comes with such dust collectors.

So today"s cleaning stint was OK. I am not going to pretend I love doing the housework, but I absolutely believe that we should all clean up our own mess.  (I don't clean Andrew's office, or Daughter's room - they can enjoy their own memory dust. ) Sometimes I wish I had a magic wand that I can wave over the house and it would sparkle with no effort.  But life doesn't work like that, unfortunately.

And when the dust settles, all we really have in life are the memories we make.   There is magic in creating a legacy of those.