Shelf – I

One of the gifts our son-in-laws gave us was to help my DH move mom’s oak book case from the garage into the studio. Today we took the shrink wrap off the shelf, replaced the floor protectors (all 8 of them), micro-remove, probably, four decades of spider webbing from the bottom and back of the shelf, and then cleaned its inside.

So, I thought the plague of smoke had been vanquished. Certainly it mostly has from the Island house (it’ll never be 100% gone). When I started cleaning mom’s shelf I thought the grub was barn dust. Nope. It was smoke/soot. Smoke is not usually emotion provoking unless one is dealing with an out of control fire… I was entertained that the smoke/soot followed me home, annoyed that my mom’s illness, and indeed, my parent’s indifference to decades of a poorly drawing fireplace was staring me down again, and felt really sorry for my mom, for the losses she struggled with in the last 15-years of her life.

Tomorrow we will, very carefully, move the shelf into my office. Its interior is painted mom’s favorite poppy red/orange. I think the oak exterior would look lovely with a dark, rich teal of some description, and there are other projects that have higher priority. If I get books reshelved by the end of the day, it’ll be a big win! Photos to follow.