Furniture Search

One of the obvi­ous flag-rais­ers for “matu­ri­ty” is an inter­est in things that only codgers find inter­est­ing. For me this is antique fur­ni­ture. Specif­i­cal­ly antique oak fur­ni­ture. Even more specif­i­cal­ly, antique mis­sion oak fur­ni­ture. Even more more specif­i­cal­li­est, refin­ish­ing antique mis­sion oak fur­ni­ture. Patience is a def­i­nite virtue in a search for a spe­cif­ic piece of fur­ni­ture. I wait­ed near­ly a year before find­ing a din­ing room table that I liked [and at a great price]. It isn’t mis­sion style, but it has clean enough lines to sat­is­fy me in that regard.

I still need to learn that when I do find some­thing that suits, I should­n’t quail at dish­ing out the bread in order to take it home with me. My mom taught me about this when she bought me two chairs to go with the table that cost twice as much as the table itself [and still need to be refin­ished].

My cur­rent long­stand­ing search is for a library table to serve me as a desk/workspace. Some­thing almost exact­ly like this. The per­fect fit for me would­n’t have the shelf at on the bot­tom [I like leg room] but oth­er­wise that table is just right. [Actu­al­ly, the apron might be a bit too low, but I can just get a low­er seat­ed chair.]

My newest search is for a cre­den­za [as I’ve recent­ly learned is how the kids are call­ing it these days] with cup­board or slid­ing doors and no draw­ers to use as an enter­tain­ment cen­ter. This piece is beau­ti­ful, but I don’t want one with draw­ers if I can help it. Also, I could­n’t afford that piece in a gril­lion years. But some­thing like that is what I need to work toward in my strange sense of antique-mod­ern mise-en-scene. [If you con­sid­er my life a movie].

The tough­est part of antique shop­ping is wad­ing through the nev­er-end­ing flow of ornate­ly-hideous glass­ware and sundry oth­er junk labelled as antique. It is amaz­ing how much crap lasts the years while beau­ti­ful stuff dies of neglect. I’ve yet to find more than one decent antique store in Cleve­land. The Lorain antique strip was unim­pres­sive to some­one who grew up in a place where there are more antique stores than bars. There is a huge antique mall near Day­ton that I want to vis­it some­time. Maybe this summer/fall.