Project post: Waterfall buffet/dresser repaint

Repaint, sinners!

I was raised NEVER to even CONSIDER painting wood. We stripped wood, we didn't paint it. So what did I do recently? I painted an old waterfall style buffet which I use as a dresser.

I don't have before pictures, but it was once a really pretty piece, with bookmatched walnut veneers. It was given to me by friends who found it in the attic of the house they bought. It had gotten dripped on by rain through some roof leaks and the veneers on each end were bubbly and broken. I still used it as it was for quite a few years. I had to replace the door hardware but found some vintage door pulls that were a great match.

I'm sorry, I don't have a "before" picture.... Duh.

Anyway, I decided I had lived too long with the broken icky veneers. I was redoing our room in lighter colors and it was this big dark blob of walnuttiness in the corner, absorbing light. So I got brave and painted it.

I didn't prep the surface, and the old varnish did this on my first coat of paint:



I thought, wow, I love that!

I ended up keeping it. The two doors on the ends have more paint on them so they are not as crackly as the rest, but look at all that. I kept the old hardware.



I covered the whole thing with a clear acrylic to protect it, as the latex paint layer was fragile. It's now a sturdy finish and much lighter and brighter to go with the room.

Name spelling variations in family history

Here's another example of the difficulty with name spellings.

Here we have William Henry Burger (with a U) celebrating the 61st anniversary of his wedding to... whom? When she wrote her own name, it was Mary Ann Dufner Burger. Here she's Maryanna Duffner. Numerous family notes spell her maiden name with two Fs, but got the Mary Ann right. Perhaps nobody thought it mattered since she was married now anyway.

Here's another document, a handwritten note that was taped into the Burger family bible, written by Frances Taylor Burger, my grandmother and the daughter-in-law of the two in the anniversary clipping:

My mother Maryanna Burger Root spent her early childhood under the same roof as William Henry and Mary Ann Burger. They split their 4-room farmhouse down the middle when their son Frank married Frances Taylor Allen (who already had a young daughter from a previous marriage), and they all shared the house. Frances was a nurse and took care of the elder Burgers until their deaths.

The Burger vs Borger Controversy

In my mother's family there was a great controversy: Whether her father's family name was Burger or Borger. I was raised believing that all right-thinking people spelled it Burger, because that was obviously what the original German immigrant was named, while those infidels on the other side of the family, with their shaky morals and doubtful intellect, spelled "Burger" with an O, of all things! Well, now that I'm going through all the family notes and photos that Mom left for me to go through (she's not dead, she's in a nursing home suffering from dementia), I have come to the conclusion that... well, my side of the family may have been wrong. My goodness, that was painful to admit.

I am amused by this page out of the Burger family bible (given to my great grandfather William Henry Burger on the occasion of his marriage to Mary Ann Dufner). Okay, it was originally the Borger family bible, however someone went through and corrected the O's into U's! I have to laugh.

It's interesting trying to research these people when I'm looking in findagrave.com for people with the last name of Burger and find out they were buried under the Borger name. I've learned to vary my searches.

Exhausted bumblebee refreshing itself on honey and water.

Another Hartmann Tourobe traveling case

Here is another wonderful Hartmann travel case made in Racine, Wisconsin. Single clasp. This one is missing the strap to hold hung up clothes in place during transit and one leather handle has broken.

Arion fasciatus slug, I think - look at this guy!

He (rather it) appeared on our sidewalk before church. S/he was still there when I got home, though had traveled across the sidewalk. S/he is huge, 4.5 inches when stretched out fully, and has the most gorgeous orange band right around the edge of his/her foot.

And now the ultimate in luxury luggage: A Hartmann wardrobe trunk, probably from about 1925.

Lost momentum there. I took my pictures for this post, then we had family visit and I forgot all about it.

Look at this baby:

It's a Hartmann top-of-the-line wardrobe trunk from probably about 1925. It would take a strapping porter to haul it around, as it weighs about as much as a smallish piano. And that's before you load it up. It's furniture.

But look at all the fittings inside! Hangers, drawers, and a removable case. Everything is engineered brilliantly to stay put when the trunk is on its side or upside down. The drawers and the inside of the trunk are lined with what I think is silk. The hardware is silvery colored. Here are more pictures.

This cloth curtain fastens over the hangers to keep dust off the clothes.

Cool wooden hangers.

This interesting gadget is a lever which is activated when you close the top on the trunk. It latches up the other latches. So you only have to manage one latch yourself. The trunk does the rest.

This is a thick plushy pad in the lid of the trunk to protect the clothes on hangers.

Here it is again.

The top drawer. Note how it's shaped to fit the contour of the top of the trunk.

This lever holds the drawers in place during shipping.

Faaaaaan - cy.

Not sure what this is for exactly. I doubt it's really a briefcase, though it looks like one. Socks? Ties? Collars? Handkerchiefs?

This is another view of that lever thingie, where the lid comes down and pushes it.

This is how it looks closed. 

Original owner's initials. I know who it is but am not saying as it's an old La Crosse family and I was asked by the person who sold this to me not to make a big deal of it. Not that they care about the trunk; they threw it away in a dumpster.

"Gibraltarized" apparently means "framed in steel so it's too heavy to move." Seriously. This baby is solid.

Right now the trunk is pretending to be a table in the living room. It's actually got a bunch of kitty litter in it right now because it smells pretty mildewy. Someday I need to replace the curtain thingie because it's got holes now. I just need to find some upholstery fabric that would coordinate with the silk on the drawers. 

I love this thing.

Cost was $20 at a moving sale. Wow.