Thursday, May 17, 2007

Ye Olde Brass Bed

Here's a few before pictures of the lovely early 1900's bed I picked up on Ebay last month. So far I've gotten the footboard top rail and sides cleaned up, although I will have to go over the details with a Q-tip and some brass cleaner to get all the gunk out. There are some gouges and dents, surpisingly less than I expected given it's age. R is eager to try his drill with a brass polishing attachment, though I am somewhat reluctant to let him use anything high-powered on this old beauty. All I've been using to clean it so far are an old penny, a pair of disposable gloves, some ratty undershirts and a can of Brasso. Seems to be working wonderfully at taking off all those layers of metallic paint and tarnish. It is a little time-intensive, but I don't mind in the least. Stuff like this just gets me warmed up to do all that wood stripping I'm dreaming of for our new/old house. I've already started accumulating old textiles again in preparation, including this lovely green chenille bedspread which works perfectly in my son's very spring green room. BTW, in case anyone else loves this color as much as we do, it's Calyx by Behr (Home Depot), and I think they only have it in their computer colorbase now, not on paint chips. I will be sad to see it go, but now is a good time to upgrade to a more big-boy version of it.
.

5 comments:

Dulcie said...

Great Ebay find!

And you will find another house which you'll love. We always drive by this other house in town that we put an offer on. After a little back and forth, we dropped out. We still call it "our house." But we can't imagine not being in our bungalow! It is definitely the better home for us.

sarah said...

Thanks, Dulcie! I think we will find a better house, it is hard to let the other one go when we'd made so many plans concerning it. I am actually leaning towards the 1899 house b/c of the large yard and bungalow architecture. We're waiting on our realtor to report the inside condition of the house before we go offering on it. It has been on the market for a while, and I don't want to go into another "lost cause" situation.

Dulcie said...

That 1899 house is adorable, and can I just say that buying a house for less than 100K is just amazing to me! (For less than 200K would be great around where I live.) These all look like great homes with so much potential.

jake said...

What an awesome bed frame. This is a twin? I spent several months on ebay looking for a queen...of something similar to what you got and never found anything we liked. I ended up buying a cast iron bedframe from Ethan Allen for our master bedroom. Pottery Barn has one we liked too

http://www.potterybarn.com/products/p957/index.cfm?pkey=cfurbedall

but nothing beats an original like you got!

sarah said...

Thanks, actually it's a full or double bed, about 54" across. Finding it did take quite a while, Ebay is fun but requires a lot of sifting to get exactly what you want. Hopefully after we get the bedrooms painted we can look for 2 or 3 more of these beds. Antique beds are awesome, easy to assemble/dissemble and very solid.