Another family heirloom bites the dust

It's almost eighteen months since I first "got serious" about shifting our old tat through the auspices of eBay. A few months less than that since I blogged about it. In that year and a half I've sold things from as small as an enamel lapel badge to as large as an entire bedroom suite comprising super-king sleigh bed (with mattress), triple wardrobe, five-drawer chest and two three-drawer bedside tables. That went to a hotel owner in Staffordshire who, in the end, was glad I'd persuaded him to come in a Luton van. He admitted he would never have got it all on the trailer he had been intending to come with.

Some of the items I've been glad to see the back of. Some of the really bad DVDs we've bought over the years, and many of the things mentioned on that blog post linked above. Things that have hung around for years not being used and never likely to be.

Some things I've had to let go with a twinge of regret. Mostly stuff that has been part of my life since childhood, but which I had to reluctantly conclude there was absolutely no point hanging on to. The Kodascope Eight Model 30 vintage cine projector that the whole family used to gather around to watch holiday footage, interspersed with reels from my Dad's small collection of B&W Felix the Cat cartoons. When I opened up its old wooden box and that familiar smell hit me, all the memories came flooding back. But hey, I don't need the object to have the memories, and it went to someone who will actually use it.

Similarly with my Mum's old Singer sewing machine. Not something I had any emotional attachment to ;0) but I was delighted that it went to a guy in the Netherlands who refurbishes them and passes them on to retired ladies who are keen on quilting. Once again something that had sat unused under Mum's sideboard for 25 years gets a new lease of life.

And since I've arrived through a roundabout route at the sideboard, it's time to reveal that it is that very sideboard, along with its matching dining table and four chairs, that is the subject of this post. For it too was sold, this weekend just past.

Solid walnut. Yes, solid, not veneer as suggested by the plonker from an auction house who came round to value it and tried to make out it was veneered because he could see a join in the top. Idiot. That's where the wood itself is jointed by the craftsmen whose workshop I visited, aged 13 or 14, to see the dining room suite being made. It was my Dad's gift for attaining his majority - 21 years with the same firm.

Walnut's not "in vogue" at the moment though, and the whole thing was both too small for our needs and too small for the room it would live in, not to mention having suffered from various forms of neglect over the years. It would take an expert, an expensive expert, to return the suite to the soft matte patina with which it originally arrived from the makers. It lived 40 years in clouds of cigarette smoke, was polished with the wrong kind of polish, suffered water damage when someone attempted to wash off the smoke residue (and left a tea-tray sitting on a damp patch), and was constantly exposed to sunlight and curtain movement on one corner, so all in all it was in a pretty sorry state.

And we don't like the style much either. Offspring never do like the style of their parents, do they? I'm no exception. So it joined the ranks of eBay sales. 228 of them since May 2011. Unfortunately we were just half an hour too late returning from our Sunday lunch with friends to arrange a pick up for that day, so we have to hang on to it for another two weeks, which in turn means our flooring guy will have to work around it.