A New (to us) Dresser

After spending six weeks working frantically to get the basement sort of finished in time for Fall in Love reveal week, we were ready for a more laid back kind of weekend. Also I got hit with a cold Saturday night. Boo. So no big project completions to blog about at the moment. We did start working on the dining room chairs. We put away some Halloween stuff and started dragging out Christmas stuff. Dave is downstairs right now working on the projector screen.

And we picked up this dresser from my aunt Maureen’s house:

barrydresser02s

(We have the other knob for it; it just has to be reattached).

Maureen sent me pictures of it last week and asked if I was interested….she’s doing some redecorating and needed to find a new home for it, but wanted it to stay in the family. It was my great grandmother’s. It’s super pretty, and I love furniture with some special meaning/history behind it, so I was very glad to get it.

It’s kind of funny, but we have very few pieces of furniture like that in our house. In fact, there’s not a whole lot that’s even made it from our last house to this one, let alone been passed down through generations. It’s easy for us to cycle through furniture because of my mom’s shop….so I can change my mind a lot without losing money (since I very rarely buy anything new). But it’s definitely nice to have a few pieces that are going to stick around. Aside from this new dresser, I have a campaign chest that my Dad gave me when I was young, and we have the dresser in Abe’s room that belonged to Dave and before that to his Dad.

It’s not staying here (I think it will be making its way to the den soon), but right now it’s hanging out, appropriately, beneath one of my grandmother’s paintings:

barrydresser01s

I love the wood grain, and all the details….like the gold borders on the drawers, and the subtle little painted flowers:

barrydresser03s

The den is currently one of our disasters that we’ve done nothing with, but our plans for it are mostly pretty modern right now, so I like the idea of having a more traditional piece in there to balance things out. Our house’s architectural style doesn’t really lend itself to full on mid century (although Don and Betty Draper DID start out the show living in a colonial revival much like ours. Hmm…..)


Comments

A New (to us) Dresser — 19 Comments

  1. Oooo, that’s pretty! I wish I had more handed down pieces. My grandparents left me this hutch but it’s HUGE. And very ornate. So it’s living in my parents basement. The irony is that I remember they had a ton of awesome antiques but my 20 year old self totally wasn’t into that. Man, I could kick her. At least you’re winning with this one!

    • We were offered a few things when Dave’s grandparents died, but their last house was a condo in Florida with big, oversized furniture, so it wouldn’t have worked for us. Dave’s aunt has a lot of what I assume came from earlier houses of theirs….some really amazing mid century stuff. Alas–Dave was born a generation too late 😉

  2. I love it! We have an old oak dresser too, which I got when I was a yung married and paid 285 dollars for it, which was and still is a fortune to me. It matches the oak dining table Teresa gave me perfectly. I keep all my bills in the top drawer and all my cds in the other drawers. So handy for storing items that would be clutter otherwise! I far prefer antiques to new furniture, it is so much sturdier and long lasting!

  3. What a gorgeous piece! I have never inherited furniture from family. Only one of my grandparents migrated to Canada in the 60s, but never lived in a home on her own to collect furniture, etc. Don’t let this one go!

    Found your blog on houseblogging 🙂

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