Old Things New

This past weekend all of David's family came together to go through his grandparents' house and divide up their things. It was weird, dissolving their home like that, as they are both still alive. His grandma has severe Alzheimer's and his grandpa is 97 and decided last fall to move himself into the nursing home to be with grandma. I guess at that age, he figured he deserved to have his meals delivered and his toe nails clipped for him. Can't really blame the guy, ya know?

I really love old things- not that I want my entire house to look like a walk through Aunt Bessie's parlor- but old things mixed with, well, IKEA stuff is what we have around here. Most of our furniture is a patchwork of stuff we've found 2nd hand, and I like that too. Our house feels less like a furniture store and more like a home this way. However, much of our stuff was cheap stuff left over from our college days, purchased never imagining that it would still be gracing our 7 year old daughters' bedroom almost 20 years later.

David is the youngest of eight (!!) siblings, so most of his family members already have much more "established" homes than we do. This bodes well for us. From grandma and grandpa's house we received a dining room table and 6 chairs, a side board, a china hutch that was a wedding gift to grandpa's mother in 1912, 2 dressers, an end table, a old red metal stool, and lots (and LOTS) of miscellaneous other stuff. Nearly without exception, this stuff was all headed to Goodwill if we didn't take it.

After we loaded it all onto trucks and headed for home, I suddenly got nervous. What if I didn't like those pieces once they were in my home? But it's all here now, and (I think) I really like it all.

The furniture brought with it a little bit of grandma and grandpa's "house smell", and even though they aren't MY grandparents (and therefore not a scent I grew up associating with anything) I kinda love it.

It smells like history.

We've done lots of rearranging to make things fit and work for us. I'm taking before and after photos to post later, so ya'll can play along. It's a game I like to call "Does this room have too much furniture?"