String o' Pearls: A “New” Chair for Oyster Haven

Monday, September 16, 2024

A “New” Chair for Oyster Haven

Greetings from upstate NY!

After a short stint back home in VA, my husband and I had to make another trip up north to check on our Oyster Haven rental property. This spring we lost a chunk of our back yard, due to erosion from heavy rains. We had to have work done to fill it in and shore it up, so that if it happens again we won’t lose our stairs that lead down to the beach. (They’ve been removed temporarily but will be reinstalled when all is secure.) We waited to get this work started until our busy summer rental season was over.

My husband wanted to see with his own eyes how the construction project on the bank was going; but he had to make a trip back up anyway, because he still had to bring in all the kayaks and the canoe from the lake and get them into winter storage, as well as bring in the buoy and the dock. Not to mention our pontoon boat, which has to get cleaned up and brought to the marina where it will be housed until next summer. I was originally going to stay behind, because I’m an incurable homebody and I’ve missed being in my own VA house. I’ve also missed our kids and grandkids who live nearby. But the bottom line is that I belong with HIM. I’m his helpmate first and foremost, and everyone else comes second. Our boys all have wives now, so they don’t really need their mommy!😊

So another week by the lake it is! And it’s been absolutely lovely here, weather-wise; it’s so warm and sunny—what we used to call an “Indian Summer.” Just glorious. As you can see.

In other Oyster Haven news…

Remember this somewhat recent post about how I re-upholstered my grandmother’s chair? Well, I have another tale to tell about bringing an old chair back to life, with little more than a scrap of fabric (from where else but my mother-in-law’s attic, which is practically a small JoAnn’s affiliate, no kidding!). And lots of TLC, of course.

Toward the end of the summer, I was thinking about hitting the secondhand shops or garage sales to look for a chair to put in the upstairs hall at Oyster Haven. When we bought it in the fall of 2015 and started getting it ready to start renting on VRBO the following summer, we didn't spend a lot of money on furniture, aside from the beds. We got bedside tables at secondhand stores and accepted a hand-me-down dining room table from my sister-in-law. We had an awesome tile-topped trestle table that my husband had made for our NH house that didn't really fit in our downsized VA house, and he made a pair of glorious wooden benches to go with it for the kitchen of the rental house. Some of the dining room chairs, a coffee table and a pair of end tables for the living room, along with a few other random pieces that we didn't have a place for in our VA house anyway, also found a home at Oyster Haven.

We were on a budget in 2015, so I ended up buying an inexpensive, nondescript little padded stool from Home Goods to fill this space in the upstairs hall, and it has been there ever since.

I must have been meant to get a new chair to replace that stool; because one August day my husband and I were driving back to his childhood home, where we stay during the summer, and out by the curb at the entrance to the neighborhood there were two dining room chairs near a pile of trash, obviously being thrown out. And when we went to look at them more closely, one of them was in great shape, except for the fabric on the seat cushion. (The other, a matching arm chair, had a hunk of wood broken off of it.)

After it was recovered, and cleaned up a bit, it looked quite lovely.

And I loved how it has transformed that upstairs hall!

(It would have been pretty, no matter the cost; but I especially love it when things are free!)

One quick addendum:I decided to recover the stool and bring it back to use in our VA living room. It’s a small room, and we have a big family; so any extra seating that we can get—especially seating that takes up very little space—is appreciated.