A California Storage Update

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Last time I shared about our heading over to our

storage units I wrote about the dust and icky spiders

I was pretty sure I was going to have to battle…

Sorry these photographs are a little blurry. They were taken with my iPhone 6 and iPhone7.
My daughter Amy calls the carved wooden ormolu on the bonnet of this armoire a “mermaid.”
And it does look a bit like a mermaid from the front! Hence the opening photograph.

But today I am happy to report that the spider issue wasn’t as bad as we originally thought they would be ~ the cobwebs were mostly around the rollup doorways.

So I took the duster you can see in the photograph above and swooshed and swept up as many webs as I could find and then

set off bug bombs to kill any other critters still alive and quickly

pulled down those doors while still holding my breath and

locked those doors and left.

🙂

That was on Thursday afternoon the day I arrived in California.

I posted a few photos on Instagram just after setting off the bombs as I still had time to go by HomeGoods in Temecula before traffic was going to get bad and I loved seeing the palm trees and smelling and feeling ocean breezes.

They were glorious!

Well, this was the mess I found when I first rolled up the doors

but when Hubby and I returned back to our storage units on

Sunday afternoon we spent a good four hours doing a

little wiping down on some of the bigger furniture

you see here.

So when we were done looking for things we needed

to take back with us right now to Texas

our storage looked like this:

Still busy and looks messy but is really better stacked. 😉

Mind you Hubby has a fit every time we go to storage

over the past three years as he has “touched” each of these

pieces soooo many times and is sick of moving them around!

{We had two other storage units, smaller ones, when we first began moving stuff out of our house

and were getting ready to show it, so EVERYTHING has been moved and restacked a lot.}

He was gracious and helped me find the box I was looking

for in between the five bookcases…

Of which he had to literally move one bookcase a few feet sideways and which has a sheet of plywood stacked overhead

with stuff on top of it…

{Thank you, Sweet Bears!!!}

What I was looking for was in the very last two boxes.

We never did find the matching dessert plates

but That’s Okay!

I love how as the sun was beginning to head down

the sky the light was falling just so on my favorite

set of ironstone plates.

I just had to snap a couple of photos…

You know how some things are just so beautiful to

you and only you?

Well, these dinner plates are like that to me.

Funny how just some plates that cost $4 each but with their

swirly swirls and Shabby Chic look

they can mean so much and look

so beautifully rich.

I haven’t ever found these again ~ and I’ve looked.

I’ll have to share the three small bowls that were

also in storage and match these plates

another time.

😉

Hubby found the books he needs for work and a

couple of DVD’s/Blu-Rays our daughter wanted.

Those were in the other storage unit two doors down

from this one…

The one Hubby worked on looking through 40 boxes

of books…

Thankfully when Amy, her friend Jillian, my friend Bonnie

and I were packing everything

I asked them all to write on each box what was in it.

Just a rough idea ~ like Jane Austen books or

Childhood books or Decorating Magazines.

Hubby’s books he and I marked the same way from

his office.

🙂

Two more things I wanted to share but they stayed

in California until we move everything to Texas ~

one is this sweet pheasant painting I bought in

Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England

at an antiques shop that specialized antiques

and WWII British military history.

This shoppe had a whole military museum downstairs!

A fascinating store and I wish I could remember

the name for you as I would do a write-up of the place.

I’ve linked a couple of places above that might

be where I am thinking we went…

but it has been 13 years.

Nevertheless, the pheasants and other animal and farm scenes

were painted somewhere in Eastern Europe and then were

brought over and sold in England.

I found another with the same framing while browsing at a Goodwill thrift store in Lake Elsinore

a few days later on my way back to the hotel and

bringing back Peony’s Chinese food

to share with my hubby.

:)’

This isn’t a great view of my dresser and which is really a *French Provincial commode but I wanted to show it to you.

I found it in 1989 at an antique shop in San Juan Capistrano

when my deaf brother Frank came down to visit me.

Commodes were usually meant to hold linens and such

in a drawing room or living room.

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I gasped when I first saw it and knew it was mine!

I remember the store owner sharing with me if I knew

that this piece was French.

This is when and where I first fell in love with

French country furniture.

When I said no, he in turn told me all about it.

I’ve always loved the grain staining technique that

S-curves down the sides of this piece that

the furniture finisher used on it.

I have forgotten the technique’s name but will add

it if I remember it later.

😉

*Update: I was just out on a blogging friend Cindy’s site, Edith and Evelyn Vintage, where she’s talking about creating her French Provincial buffet and realized that mine was
the same style. Now I am able update and share this with you for when you are looking for
similar pieces! 🙂

Both the French commode and the French armoire are

from the1880’s and are in their original finishes.

The woman I bought the armoire from ~ who was closing her gift shop at the mall I used to work at in Carlsbad,California ~

said that in the late 1800’s France and Italy were copying period Louis XV case goods to reproduce them and that my armoire

is a reproduction from this time period.

I was sooo happy to find it ~ she had two armoires

that she was selling that day ~ I love it and

hope to never part with it!

Roses blooming madly outside

I am grateful that we were able to get some cleaning

and organizing done while back in California in preparation

for the big move to Texas hopefully later this year.

Depends upon money and whether it is better to wait until

we find our next house or bring it all out and look for a

home next year.

Choices…

At least the spiders are at bay for a while.

😉

Sharing with

Saturday Sparks

Farmhouse Friday

Friday at the Firestation

Friendship Friday
Hearth and Soul

Dishing It and Digging It
Keep in Touch

Have a great weekend,

A California Storage Update

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