Here we go again… Literally.

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, no, not really stormy. Or even night. But it was dark. And wet. My son was with me, along with my dad and daughter, in October of 2018 to discover and salvage whatever millwork we could find in three separate -but adjoining- commercial buildings in a nearby town. All were slated for demo; roofs had leaked for years, the smell of rot was everywhere. It was safe, but caution was the order of the day.

i knew one of the buildings housed, at one time, a clothing store that had vintage oak upright cabinets along opposite walls and I was hoping to claim something useful. Ended up getting three cabinets loose from the floor, drop ceiling, and from each other, and brought them to one of Dad’s storage sheds for safe keeping while a purpose presented itself.

Each of them are 48” wide and roughly 6’ tall. One has glass front drawers and brass pulls on the bottom half and tracks for what should have been sling doors on top (now missing).

The other two have flip-up divided glass doors in front of four large shelves, and two pull-out drawers at the base.

This was October of 2018. And in the shed is where they stayed until each of them got hauled across town to Dad’s shop for drying. It was now Jan 2021.

 

They needed drying, you ask? Yep. Each carcase was so damp that drawers and windows wouldn’t operate… all was swelled shut. If they were gonna stay around, I had to know if they were usable in the short term.

What has happened in the 22 months since the move? Well, you’ll have to wait for the next installment. Oh, and I need to find my Workshop Style Guide in the meantime.

More to come, thx for looking!