Friday, April 12, 2013

Dust Be Gone


Thank you so much to all who commented so sweetly last week about my small bathroom and its bouquet of glass! The bathroom refurbishment also gave us the opportunity to do something about my dressing room. Here is where I admit that about the only reason I can call it a dressing room is because it contains my closet, something that was missing in this 1920 farmhouse bedroom when we bought it.


Other than the closet, this tiny 8 x 10 room also held an ironing board that always seemed to be up and was a handy place to hold a multitude of things and even a surface to wrap Christmas presents. The main thing that used to be in this little room was a huge industrial shelving rack holding my collection of mostly women's magazines dating back to 1865. The collection has taken me over thirty years to amass and is all inventoried. They have given me hours of good reading but they were a dusting nightmare. I know I should have gotten before pictures but here is a shot of some of the magazines stacked all over our small dining room during the redo. We call it the small dining room but there is no large dining room.


After painting the bathroom and dressing room, in came a large piece of furniture, our old entertainment center. Nobody seems to want these old dinosaurs, even on Craigslist, but I knew it would look much better than the industrial shelving in my "dressing room."


I know bloggers won't understand why I didn't work some magic on this old cabinet with some Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. Sigh. No, I didn't, and R.H. made it perfectly clear that he was not going to either.


What he and our son Gurn did, however, was to make sturdy new shelves in it to hold all those magazines and a nice solid back to keep out all the dust.


A nice young friend spent five hours dusting each magazine and then arranging them not only by year but by month, January through December. I'm talking about 1865 through 1970. It was a dusty job.


Gurn made labels so that I can see the years at a glance.


Son Zack, who moved all the dusty magazines out before work began, had said, "Mom, we're giving all these magazines to Goodwill when you're gone."

"Heck no," big brother Gurn said. "I'll take them all and sell them on eBay!"

(Where buyers will tear them apart and sell all the old Coca-Cola adds on eBay themselves. Arrgh! Don't get me started on that destructive practice, except to say, "Once they're gone, they're gone for good, folks.")

My dusty dressing room is gone too. There is even a place for the ironing board to hide.


I'm never going to mess up this room again. I promise.


20 comments:

  1. I am envious of your organizational skills. I seem to amass lots of things, but they remain disorganized. It drives me batty! One of these days....

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  2. Wow! That is quite a collection, Dewena. You are right-once those books & magazines are gone-they are gone. I just couldn't get into that practice of ripping off book covers and destroying books for the sake of decorating....but that's just me. Your dressing room is looking great. What a wonderful space. xo Diana

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  3. I adore that red trimmed enamel table...totally cute! I'm of two minds about painting wood...hate it and don't do it. If the wood isn't beautiful, painting is the only option but if the wood is beautiful...why paint?

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  4. beautiful dear friend.
    the elegant floor and the almost shaker style wood. well. just perfect.
    i could sit for hours and then days looking at your collection. how wonderful it is.
    xo

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  5. Wow that was a lot of work-it all looks so wonderful though. I hope noone ever tears those magazines apart-it would be such a shame.
    Have a good weekend

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  6. Dewena, using that entertainment cabinet to store your magazines is brilliant. I think the cabinet looks great, as is. What a great collection of magazines, and I'm so impressed that they are so organized. I have a collection of magazines (not vintage, yet) dating from the late 60's, but they are stacked here and there and everywhere. Your dressing room looks great! laurie

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  7. Oh my gosh, what a GREAT IDEA!!!! You're right, no one wants those "entertainment centers" anymore, and this was a great idea.

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  8. Sounds like you have some good sons, helping you out like that.
    My wife would enjoy your old magazines. She loves everything old, especially history, genealogy, etc.

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  9. Doesn't it feel great, though? Proud of you!!!

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  10. I absolutely love the big storage cabinet. Could you send Gurn and your dusting friend over here...I sure could use them:):) Have fun this weekend. xoxo,Susie

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  11. That is a great idea, using the entertainment cabinet for the magazine collection. I am not very organized. I start out with good intentions but lose track.

    Enjoy your weekend Dewena.

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  12. Dust be Gone! I was hoping for an actual dust be gone solution...ssh sometime my kids help with that chore! LOL This was a wonderful post and your collection is priceless; imagine the insights you have gained to see things in a different perspective through out the years, it must me so interesting, you my friend have a good portion of history! On a side note my husband still has his comic books and all of them are in plastic bags that he purchases at a comic book store. These bags are fitted for comics books just wondering if bags come in different sizes and you can find bags that fit your magazines. I believe they cost pennies, and perhaps help you with the dust. Something to think about....your room looks beautiful!!!

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  13. I need to learn these great organizational skills! I am thinking this is really a great system! I am always happy to see you here as I am way late cathcing up everywhere I go!

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  14. Wow, that's a library! Yay for organization and dust gone. I'm so sick of Annie Sloan chalk paint on everything in blogland. At least your son was thinking ebay. I always tell my kids, please don't just throw all of this out one day.....you can sell it on ebay. I guess it won't matter either way. ha

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  15. It must be delightful to look back at all the articles and recipes from the past. You have a great place to store them now. You are so organized!

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  16. I have a few magazines from the 20s and 30s. The dialogue in some of the articles is hilarious. For instance, one Halloween-themed article suggested that you don't dress your children in costumes that might lead them to "a life of delinquency." Also, I'm so jealous of your chandelier. I've always wanted a chandelier in our bathroom. My son and husband tried to do it, but the placement of the junction box in our 1950s bathroom made it impossible. Oh well. :)

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  17. 1865? My goodness, what a collection! I would love to spend a couple of hours going through your magazines. I collected about ten years worth of Colonial Homes before they stop publishing. I kept them stacked in my clothes closet. When I decided it was time to let them go, I donated them to the library. They seemed glad to get them. Have a great week!

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  18. Your transformation is wonderful, but I am consumed with the desire to sneak into your house and settle down in a corner to read through your magazine collection. Brilliant to use the old entertainment center to house it, too.

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