Reclaiming Some Heirlooms

This afternoon, we went over to Irish Woman's aunt's house to retrieve a piece of her mother and father's estate.  You see, when they died in the late 1960's, their household got spread across the extended family, and their bedroom furniture went to this particular aunt and uncle.  They have passed away now, and their kids asked Irish Woman if she'd like the furniture.

Since she became an adult, Irish Woman's been able to find and reclaim a few things that belonged to her parents.  She's found some jewelry, her mother's wedding ring, the family china, a few pictures, and today she got back some of the furniture that her parents bought for each other when they got married.

It's a fine old hardwood set, and it's going to need a little TLC.  That being said, it's in remarkable shape for being almost 50 years old.  We got it home, and set to work giving it a good scrub with Murphy's Oil Soap and elbow grease.  Irish Woman remarked on how dark the finish was, when her memory of it was that it was lighter.  Then we started scrubbing.

Before:

 After:

That's one of five bar towels we used to clean up the furniture, along with two buckets of Murphy's and hot water.  This is the accumulated tar and ash from five decades of smoking in bed.  Another reason I don't care for smoking - it gets into everything.  The more we scrubbed, the more we smelled Lucky Strikes and Parliaments.

We let the woodwork dry after cleaning it, then wiped it down with a healthy dose of lemon oil.  We'll keep doing that for a while, but our long term plan is to strip it down to the bare wood and refinish it.

You don't see craftsmanship like this anymore without paying through the nose for it.  These things are solid wood, and are held together with joinery and some screws.  No plywood, veneer, or particle board in this stuff.  Accordingly, it weighed a ton.

The good news is that if we take care of it, it will be there for Boo when we either decide to pass it on or we decide to start taking advantage of that time share I have on the Lake of Fire.

Here are the two dressers.  The bed is still disassembled, but it's just as pretty.