2024 Quick Daily Posts

[richardandtracy]

Merry Christmas, everyone. All the best for tomorrow.

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

And a very happy Christmas to you and yours, Richard!

[Mabel Figworthy]

A very happy Christmas to one and all!

[Roland]

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Ours was very quiet, but we had the kids and their families here yesterday…17 people. Unfortunately, one grandson had to work.

[Serinde]

17 is still pretty respectable!! Our Elder Son had to work as well, but we saw him the other day, which was really nice. (We gave him a lift back to his new flat precisely so that he could take a whole load of “stuff” belonging to him away from our home to his! Win!)

[richardandtracy]

We've been having a very quiet holiday. MIL had Christmas with us, and seems to be still stuck on how nice the roast potatoes were.

Other than MIL, the biggest thing has been polishing and woodworm treatment. We discovered 5 large carved candlesticks (up to 24"/60cm high) that my parents bought in 1962, and have started to polish them. They are intricately carved into the forms of berobed Chinese fishermen and ancient scholars. They have carved scrolls, fish or cranes all as part of the carving. All also have white carved inserts for teeth and eyes. (Years ago my dad was concerned that these were ivory, but having had one piece drop out I think they are more likely to be a hard plastic as there is a bit of spring to the material.) Anyway, these carved candlesticks have been utterly transformed by the 5 applications of furniture polish required to get the dull and starved looking wood to shine again.

Then we started on the carved back panel to my grandparents' sideboard. We rescued the back panel from my dad's garage last January. It was saturated and mouldy from sitting in a damp area caused by a blocked gutter splashing on the outside of the garage's single skin wall. As we put the back panel into our van, the glued joints started to fall apart, and in a few areas the areas where the wood had been laminated to give more depth to the carving, it also fell to pieces. All in all, it was in a very sorry state.
Over the last year we had the back panel in our conservatory, with a dehumidifier gently keeping the place dry, to allow the back panel to dry off without further damage. Now it's sufficiently dry, we've started to inspect it. And found it needs a lot of woodworm treatment as well as mould killer. We've done the first application of 3 to the four carved Wuffen Huff-Puffs (Lion's body, two small wings, female chest, dragon's head - it's a VERY Victorian gothic sideboard!) and various other bits that fell off.

I shall be needing to re-glue quite a bit of timber laminations, and re-carve some smaller bits of wood that have either disintegrated or we've lost on the way. It's on the verge of being too big a job for me. We have a furniture restorer who lives nextdoor but 2, and will be getting him to give us an idea of whether he can do it and whether we can afford for him to do it. I do know it's a BIG job.

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

Bless you for putting all this elbow grease into such a huge job. I have found that humidity (and insects) are the very devils! How in the world people live in places that are really humid and lively, I don't know. I suspect your neighbour will at least be glad to give good advice.

[Mabel Figworthy]

That sounds like a huge but satisfying undertaking Richard! Glad all those lovely pieces of wood are being rescued.