the undiscovered country

In our three years in the house I've made a point of never fully cleaning out the shelves in our basement. They were to be our last great hope, our rainy day fund, the last of the discoveries after finishing the rest of the house. For a person like me, living in a house like this, facing the fact that at some point there will be nothing left to find is a terrible thing - I relish the possibility and decrepitude far more than any finished room, which is perhaps why there are far more befores than afters on this blog.

no, this wasn't staged...

However, for work to proceed, sacrifices have to be made - in this case, for the electrician to work on the wiring mentioned a few posts ago, things from the sacred shelves had to be moved out of harms way. The shelves in questions are in the first room of the basement. This room includes such charming features as the "keep out room," (created in part from what we think are boards from our butlers pantry), suckers and stems from the now removed sassafras tree that refuses to go down without a drawn out battle, and a hefty helping of cobwebs and compost from decaying who-knows-what on the shelves.

The green thing is actually an antique oak pie
safe, I found part of the door frame while cleaning

On the other hand, the shelves did not disappoint. There were pieces of gas light sconces, 20 original swing arm curtain rods of different designs (no mounting brackets though, anyone know where I can get those for a reasonable price, metal shop maybe?) a copper engraving plate with the name of someone who lived nearby in the 20's, many antique canning jars, and various controlled substances - my favorite of which was a full antique bottle of chloroform.

Yes, my house plays the part of the creepy mansion to a T... While we're on that creepy note, how about this?

Yes, that would be a pinned and labeled bug collection from 1965 in a cigar box. It had been on the top shelf, and the evil monkey had just come down to see how the cleaning was going. I asked him to clear off the shelf so I didn't have to set up the ladder (he's exceptionally tall, perhaps the whole reason I keep him around). He reaches up, produces this box, peaks inside, and excitedly closes it and tries to hand it to me saying "this is so cool." To which I reply "it's a box of spiders isn't it?" I have ESP. The box has now been returned to the (much cleaner) top shelf, where it will continue to horrify owners for decades/centuries to come. Also returned to the top shelf, all the chemicals, and the hilariously labeled Fine Dry Wine from Futryk (the owners of the house from the 50's until us) Vineyards of Edgewood PA. Strange that our friends didn't want to come over for a wine tasting.....

Perhaps the most miraculous find however I have the evil monkey to thank for. Also on the top shelf, laying in the dirt in the corner (blending into the shelf well enough that I would never have noticed it while cleaning from the ground) was a piece of glass.

The glass, and also a pirate ship I stole from my cousin's
pirate themed Bar Mitzvah - it's labeled Queen Anne's Revenge,
so I clearly had to have it.

Yes, a piece of purple rippled stained glass that most likely came from one of our five missing stained glass windows (pieces of which we've been finding buried in the back yard). That folks is not the wondrous part though. The wondrous part is that the glass is an exact match to the three 5 foot long transoms I was given when I bought all those wavy glass windows a few months back.

The universe is a pretty cool place....

This is slightly better, I promise

And yes, the view from our garret remains the same, skeletal trees and mud, oh spring...