This is my dresser. I’ve had this piece for almost 20 years. Walking along the street one day in Cambridge, I saw this dresser sitting at the curb. I was pretty sure it was free for the taking. Just in case it wasn’t, I thought I would finish my errands and if it was still out there when I returned home, I’d find a way to get it up to my apartment. I didn’t own a car when I lived in the Boston area because I could get everywhere via public transit. So when I walked back toward my apartment and saw that it was still sitting there, I had to think fast. Luckily, my neighbor and good friend was home and I enlisted her help. We lugged the dresser home in the summer heat, a distance of about 4 city blocks. Then it was hefted up 3 flights of stairs.
I didn’t like the dark wood, so I painted it gray. It followed me out to San Diego when I moved there to take a new job. Eventually I painted it yellow and replaced the knobs with green glass knobs from Restoration Hardware.
When I painted the legs, I left some of the gray paint untouched because I liked way the contrast highlighted the carving.
The soft yellow (a shade by Ralph Lauren) makes me smile. Truth be told, it has become a bit battered, the drawers don’t close right and sometimes I want to replace it. I may do that in the next couple of years. I don’t know if I could let it go entirely, however. I’ll have to hang on to it, even it it means storing it in the shed. It reminds me of the streets of Cambridge, my wonderful apartment on Harvard Street, a time in my life when I was having all sorts of adventures. I had embarked on a teaching career, I loved Boston and teaching at Boston University, and I finally had an apartment with more than one room. It was a very special time in my life. I eventually moved to San Diego, met Don, fell in love and married. I left my single girl days behind. Happily. But I treasure those Boston memories…and the dresser is part of them.
Some of my favorite things are here. A McCoy dish with a bird whose tail feathers are broken (I have one just like it with the bird intact downstairs,) two pieces of Roseville Pottery, and a photo of my husband. There are several necklaces draped on the photo’s frame – Don says it looks like a shrine.
This is my favorite piece of Roseville. It is the Bushberry pattern – a cornucopia. Lovely.
Little did this dresser know that day as it was forlornly sitting out at the curb, that it would find a new home and cross the country not once, but twice!
I’m experimenting with making my photos larger – after pouring through all the tips online, I think I’ve found something that works with my template – what do you think?
