One of my favorite haunts is an architectural salvage. Northeast Salvage is full of treasures - from tiny vintage hardware fittings to huge fireplace surrounds. There are hundreds of doors and window frames of all kinds. One time there was the whole inside of a church - pews, sacristy, altar, and even a confessional booth. Shoppers in search of absolution for excessive retail expenses could duck in after making their purchases! I love wandering around, soaking in all the history (and dust!). It is a joy to see such exquisite craftsmanship and to know it's not ending up in some landfill. It is also dangerous - my mind was just whirling with ideas for making things.
Today I was on a mission to find replacement knobs for a dresser I'm refinishing. I recently came across a dresser re-do that featured mismatched knobs - light bulb moment! I needed fourteen knobs and decided to do some matching/mismatching. The small white porcelain ones will go on the top drawers and the two flower -shaped ones on the side doors.
These beauties will be on lower drawers. There were boxes and boxes of these -all kinds of shapes and designs. They did, of course, have some nice plain ones, but who could resist the fancy ones? I'll be scrubbing them up a bit and may swipe on / wipe off some white paint to highlight the decorations and make them work with the rest of the dresser.
Word of caution - this is not thrift-store shopping! Apparently salvaging doo-dads is expensive. While I had spent a good ten minutes earlier in the day trying to pry the cap off a jar of face cream so I could get the last few pennies worth of cream out, I happily dropped some serious money for these treasures. I rationalized it by reminding myself I was re- purposing the dresser and not buying a new one, so the pricey knobs were really a bargain!
No comments:
Post a Comment