Skip Surfing

Not much to report as I was off island for a week and the plans are currently held up because my grand vision isn’t exactly compatible with building regs – I’ll save that tale for when it’s (hopefully) resolved.

Anyway, I just remembered I never posted about these cute Windsor chairs I got a few weeks back. I’d gone to see some ex-display kitchens and as I was driving off I spotted these two chairs. It wasn’t strictly a skip but a heap of junk (particle board stuff that had got wet so collapsed when you climbed on it) out the back of the industrial unit.  I went back to ask the kitchen guy if I could take them and he said they’d been abandoned a few weeks ago by a company who’d gone bust so we decided they were fair game.

chairs

They’ve been slap dash painted with a tin of gloss and they really need sanding down and re-painting but they’re nice and sturdy – not bad for no moolah 🙂

Oh and as for the ex-display kitchens, there was nothing suitable – which was actually fortunate as I was getting a bit ahead of myself, but I got some good (and, I think, fairly honest) advice and I’d be definitely interested in going back to them for the worktops, if nothing else. Well, that’s if I can show my face there again – I discovered afterwards that I had a great big smudge of soot on my nose, that plus the tip foraging and they probably think I’m some sort of hobo.

Words of wisdom?

When I got the house, every possible wall was papered – even above the tiles in the bathroom!  I’ve still got some to remove in the dining room (including the ceiling) but the rest of it has now gone – see my previous post about it plus I’ve done the bathroom since then.

Some of the wallpaper was certainly decades old and part of me kept thinking that there might be something marvellous written underneath some of it, some words of wisdom or maybe just an “I woz ‘ere” and a date. Something. Anything.

But for metres and metres of wallpaper I was disappointed.  Then I found it, half way up the stairs, one solitary profanity.

profanity

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon as applied to range doors

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is when you hear or learn something new and then it suddenly feels you like see / hear it everywhere. Do you ever get that? I’m usually left wondering whether it is just a massive coincidence or if I was terribly ignorant beforehand.

As mentioned in my That’s grate post, before having my grate made, I did a little bit of googling around to see if any one manufactured a Yorkist replacement grate but was unable to find anything. I did find a ‘wanted’ post from 2011 where someone was looking for a grate and a door.  I sent a message to ask if they ever found a grate in case they had a supplier, the poster emailed me and said yes, but it wasn’t actually the grate that she had been missing but the fret part, she was still looking for a door however.  We had a few emails back and forth and she corrected my assumption that she had a Yorkist range like mine, hers was similar but actually a different make.

The following week I’m dropping off the old grate in Laxey and decide to pop into the antique shop – they also have an overflow ‘warehouse’ across the street and just as I was leaving I noticed a door on the floor, partly obscured by a piece of wood, in the vicinity of a pile of slates with a sticker on them saying “not for sale – property of landlord”.  I moved the wood  out of the way and took the following photo:

Old range door

I sent it to my new correspondent just on a whim really – thinking ‘what are the odds that a door should literally appear at my feet days after someone told me they need one’, bearing in mind this is just a door, there’s was no evidence of a range to go with it and the chimney sweep told me the only similar range he was aware of is in Cregneash museum.  She replied to my email and said it might work and asked for the contact details of the antique shop – I sent her a link to their facebook page and she told me she’d been in touch and it sounded positive but she was waiting for more measurements and hadn’t dared to ask a price yet. I pointed out that the postage would probably be the prohibitive part.  Anyway, I just got an email from her, the shop arranged the postage and the door (with a slight adjustment for one of the hinges) fits!  Seriously – what are the odds?  Her wanted post had been published over 3 years ago!

Oh and when I went to collect my grate from the blacksmith – what do I see?  Yep, another range door – that one wasn’t for sale though, I asked him about it and he said it was for his barbecue!  I swear I’ve never seen a stray range door before and in the space of two weeks I have a conversation with someone who needs one and then see two lying around.  The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon in action?  Because if it’s not that, I must be magic 🙂