The Tub and the Lamp

This odd thing happens when you have something you hate, then someone else sees it and they love, love, love it!  Suddenly this eye-sore item starts to shift and take on a new and wonderful personality. And becomes one of your favorite things. We have a very, very old lamp that came with the house. The light bulbs each have their own switch so you can turn them on and off individually. A cool feature, but all of the lights never seem to work at the same time. Not my favorite feature.

The brass lamp

However, the guy who removed it for us, love, love, loved it. "It is solid brass, heavy, with delicate carvings on the ceiling plate". As he is hoisting it down, I am looking disgusted with the heavy ornate item and had ideas of just trashing it. Until........... he says, "I'll take it, this is an amazing and unique piece. It is worth a lot and such a find."

Now the shift is starting. This horrible, gaudy lamp is starting to look beautiful, unique and charming. I tell him he cannot have it, I will find a place for it. (I'm thinking it can hang in the closet)  He is thinking, it should be our entry way focal point.  Okay, maybe it will look nice as a focal point!  What am I saying, this old cranky light fixture that I have hated for 6 years.

But there it is, the transformation from trash to treasure. Now everyone who is working on our house renovation gets to see "the lamp". Every week it becomes more valuable and something we will "never" remove from it's home.

So I was chatting over my manicure about the lamp.  When "K" shares her trash to treasure story.  She has lived for the past 20 years in an older home that had an original deep sink in the laundry room. It was painted lime green and was very useful when it came to cleaning paint brushes, storing rags and generally it became the "dirty" place for stuff. She is moving and was thrilled to leave the 500 pound thing behind, until her sister arrives and describes the tub as "an original soap stone tub"  wow, these are amazing, look at what people do with them!!! Pintrist has a way of creeping into all of these "look what you can do" conversations.  The images of soap stone sinks made into masterpieces, flower pots, beautiful sinks, etc. Now my friend "K" is in it, transforming her idea of this horrible, ugly, heavy sink into a amazing, original, priceless gem that was surprisingly sitting right under her nose all these years.

Her husband was not thrilled when she informed him that the sink was coming to the new house.  Sometimes it is hard for our husbands to manage our sudden change in prospective regarding these old and previously hated items.  He is a lovely, compliant guy, who now has a hernia, and with some help, the sink gets loaded and moved. All 600 pounds of it (it gained 100 pounds while I was writing this story). The real finishing touch on K's story is that the tub was placed face down on the patio and the numbers 12/08/04 show up imprinted on the bottom. Seems to be the date the sink was made in 1904.

In conclusion,  like people who live over 100 years, things that survive that long seem to deserve a little extra attention, even if they are too heavy and all of their lights aren't quite on anymore.