Taking it on the chin(a)

Over the last six weeks, I've been sorting out my parents' vast collection of bone china.

My Dad loved Colclough. 

When I was about 12 (?), he started to buy the odd piece, brand new, from our local department store.  He could only buy, say, one plate.  The chosen set was Wayside,  which is very floral and very pink.  (I think I may have had a hand in choosing it).

Many years later, when bone china was out of fashion,  he would rescue sets.  He didn't limit his collecting to Wayside, he branched out into another pattern, and another, and another.

 

We had five massive sets of the stuff to sort out,  plus a small amount from 3 other sets.  I don't even have pictures of the whole sets.  I can't find pictures of two of the sets at all.

 

I've managed to sell two huge sets, thanks to the generosity of a friend. She happened to collect one of them, and she bought the other to split between her daughter and her Aunt.

My friend has also been responsible for me selling some of the Wayside (the one my Dad bought when I was young), and also some of the Stardust.    My BFF's sister bought part the Wayside, and that made me really happy. 

I've also sold various configurations of Stardust and Avon, I haven't tried selling the remainder of the Wayside yet, I'm waiting until after our tea party in June.

 

I was successful in selling two smaller collections, luckily my parents only had a few pieces of those.

My cousin was happy to receive a non Colclough set of china as a memory of my Dad.

There is still more china to go, but we may have to wait until the house is sold.    I've got so many crates of carefully wrapped china, I just don't want to deal with any more at the moment.

 

Down

Having a not-so-great few days.

Rude person on Ebay, I'm letting him get to me more than I should.

Mum's not doing so well.

I've done another mountain of scanning,  and a load of shredding (can't burn anything as I'mve just had the schimney swept and I'm waiting for the stove to be serviced).  There's still a load to do, and I'm concerned now about the stuff I destroyyed without scanning.

Severe back and stomach issues.

I've got crates stacked everywhere, and we're trying to clear up so we can hold this thing for my Dad in the garden.

Normal sevrice will be resumed as soon as possible.

Cooping Strategy

I'm shattered. My back is killing me.

Another 3 nights/4 days of clearing my parents house, with us coming back very late Tuesday night. 

ONE of the sets of china

Wednesday and Thursday was spent dealing with stuff I'd brought back.  The crates we bought for transporting stuff are working really well.   I've got a large number of them stacked up against the wall in my living room, most of which contain the worlds largest private collection of Colclough china. 

My parents collected several sets. The picture shows just one of those sets.

Friday was a warm day, and I decided I really had to do the chicken coops.  I normally do a deep clean and disinfect in  early April, but all this business with my Mum has meant I've not been able to,   I seized the sunshine on Friday,  and did all 3 coops.   It took quite a long time, and I was so very tempted to just do 2. Or 1.       

They are all done now

I've also had a slight rearrangement of one part of the run, with DH putting in a fairly low level bar for the girls to roost on during the day.  

They have, of course, ignored it.  

DH also set up the enormous shade, unasked, for them.  

All we need now is enough sun to justify it.

My back and stomach are terrible today,

It's not all bad

Clearing out a couple of drawers, we found my Dad's old Company Stamp.  It had an inkpad with it, but the inkpad died a long time ago.

My Dad was self employed, and he used to stamp the top of every invoice, each of which was written out by hand,  in his duplicate book.   This was long before the advent of self inking stamps.

I'll have to get an inkpad and stamp something.

We also found some placemats which my brother and I remembered from our childhood.  They were extremely battered, we've put them to one side for now.

Small things, but they made us smile and brought back memories

Video on demand

We were lucky enough to have a video recorder very early on. None of my friends had one.

The tapes were eye-wateringly expensive.    We started off with 60 minute tapes, and then as time went on, 120 mins and even 180 minutes!! became available.

Back then, of course, you could only see films when they were shown on TV.  There was no Iplayer, or on-demand service.  So we used to record films and keep them.  Dad built a drawer for them, and then another one.  We had a massive collection.

I found them all today.  All mouldy, sadly.

As I piled the into a heavy duty bag, the titles made me smile.

Grey Lady Down, Magificent Seven,  Jaws, The Omen,  That Touch of Mink,  Benny Hill, Support your Local Gunfighter....n

Hundreds of them.

Our own "on demand" library.

And the most treasured of all, some of the James Bond films.  I remember the excitement when Goldfinger was going be shown on television for the first time!

Man in a Suitcase

Back at my parents' home this weekend, more clearing.  

The first tip run was stuff we'd stacked up in the hall from our last visit.    This time, we're focussing on a couple of the upstairs rooms.

We've removed 6? 7? sets of luggage so far.  Each large suitcase has at least one, usually two, smaller suitcases nestled inside.   The suitcases are worn, or damaged, or nibbled, so can't be passed on.#

There are are additional holdalls, most of which are mouldy, or nibbled.   They're stacked ready for the tip.  And Many, many, many more Readers Digest editions of famous literary works.  I wish we'd counted how many of them we've disposed of already.  DB has 80 in the car for the tip already, and I've got another 80 packed ready to go.  These are just the editions that were stacked up going mouldy;  we haven't taken them out of the bookcases yet.

 DB managed to bring at least one ancient TV downstairs, so that's in the queue to go. 

We've found a lot of stuff which has made us chuckle, I'll write more about that later

Offencive

We decided a couple of months ago that we needed to replace the fence.  One of the panels was broken, and some were worse for wear,

We agreed that we would get completely different panels this time.  It should be a relatively easy job, as we had slotted concrete posts and gravel boards put in when we had it done. In theory, we should be able to just slide the old panel out and then slide the new one in. 

It turned out that the fence panels weren't 6 foot high.  We had asked for a 6 foot fence, and the installer had taken that to be 6 foot finished height, the fence panels were 5 foot 6.   This limited our choice of suppliers.

The cost per panel was much more than I anticipated, probably akmost double what I expected.   We decided to replace the first 6 panels, which took it down to our summerhouse and, more importantly, up to where next door's side was covered by shrubs.

We were surprised that, upon, ordering, we were given a likely delivery date of 25th May.   It was a longer lead time than we expected, but it meant we would still get it done before we have this thing in the garden in early June.

This morning I woke up early.  I decioded to get up at 7am, and I checked my Mail before I had my shower.  There was an email from the supplier, from 5.08am, saying the fence panels woud be delivered today between 7am and 9am.

DH had to get up in a hurry, I got in the shower, and the fence panels arrived.

My lovely brother came to help DH remove the old panels and fit the new ones.   All went well,  until I accidentally let one of the cats escape.  Lewis refused to be caught or cajoled, so we had to leave him to it.  As soon as we stopped trying to get him, he came in of his own accord.

Removing the old panels continued, and then installing the new ones started.  Some were a piece of cake, others were a little bit more tricky here access was severely limited.   And then we found that one of the gaps wasn't a full width panel!

Luckily, DH is very handy, and he trimmed the framed panel and sorted out the frame so it's not possible to tell (unless you go out there with a tape measure).

It was all done fairly quickly, and it looks LOVELY!  I wish we'd bought all the panels now.  

We will do the rest of the fence after the party in June.

Quick!

I was amazed that my A0 desk sold very quickly. 

Even better, the buyer wanted to pick it up the next day!

This meant getting it dismantled and getting it out.   In turn, this meant that I had to move all the stuff I had piled onto the landing.  Most of it got pushed into our bedroom, some got slung into the spare bedroom. 

We eventually had it dismantled, and started taking it downstairs.  We were knackered.

The next morning, I remembered that I had a large, glass clear, cutting mat undert the bed in the spare bedroom. It seemed sensible to give that away with the desk. 

Except.

Except I'd now piled everything into the bedroom and on the bed.

Deep breath. Start sorting. One item at a time. Place it tidily, out of the way.  Clearfloor space.  Attempt to slide out Kallax unit so I can get to the area behind and pull out thecutting mat. Rmemeber that the Kallax unit fits under the bed, but the bed had to be lifted up to put it in place (because it has a lip round the frame).

Attempt to lift bed. Fail. 

Try again at the corner. Fail. 

Clear bed one item at a time.  Try to put stuff out of the way

Lift corner of the bed. Slide out part of Kallax unit.

Lift corner of the bed, slide it out a bit more. A bit more. 

Move so I can lift the bed with one hand (ha ha ha) and push the Kallax with my leg,

Bed gives birth to Kallax

 Ooh, Kallax unit.  That might be useful in the room I've just taken the desk from. 

Kneel on floor,  attempt to pull out the cutting mat.

Fail.

Deep breath.  Move the stuff that is on top of the mat.  Pull.   Pull. Pu-u-u-ull.

Mat, with everything on it, slides towards me.

Push everything off the mat, away from me.

Retrieve mat.

Amazed I managed to do it all without getting cross with myself.

DH was out today.   The buyer came on time, and we managed to get it all into their car. 

Quick break, some cordial, and I'vegot to take some of my Mum's bone china over to Maidenhead to be collected from my brother's house.  Except he isn't in, so I'll have to wait there in the car until the buyer turns up.

Every little helps!

 

 

 

Madness!

I was listing stuff for my Mum on Ebay today.

I've got 4 (very large)  crates full of china sitting in my living room.  There's more still at her house,  I don't have the room to keep it here at the moment.

I've almost finished the scanning. I've still got the house plans to scan, but that requires me to excavate my large format scanner.

During a break for coffee this morning, I was overcome with an urge to clear my "cutting desk" so that I could take photos  ready for listing at some point.  We'd decided ages ago that it had to go, as we are probably going to have to sacrifice the box room to put a lift in. 

Clearing was a mammoth task, because it has filing cabinets underneath, and ten tonnes of stuff on top.

Once I'd managed, eventually, to get the stuff out of the room, I tried taking photos. And measuring.  And doing a video showing that the electrics all work.

Then I thought I might as well list it now. 

And then.  I got an email advising me that the music shop up North now had an Orla COmpact Theatre Jubilee in stock.   My Grand Theatre Jubilee also has to go, as there won't be enough room for it.    didn't want to lose it completely, so I'd decided I'd replace it with the much smaller Compact version.  I had dithered so much last time that the music company sold the one I was looking at.     I had regretted not buying it ever since, and I've been waiting for them to get another one in.

I bought it.  Then I scrabbled around looking for the funds to pay for it. I've been squirrelling money "down the back of the sofa" for some time.   I'm a bit short, but I've got some other things to sell which will make up the shortfall.

Now was the perfect time, what with me having partially emptied the room (into the landing) anyway.   And that also spurred me on into deciding that we might as well dismantle the cutting table. I couldn't face putting all that stuff on, only to have to get it all out again if I managed to sell it.

I'm not really sure where I'm going to put the stuff that was on it.

I'm going to try and sort it all out tomorrow.

I'm not sure what made me think thatstarting this sort of major declutter, in the midst of decluttering my Mum's house,  was a good idea.

But it'll be worth it when its done.

Won't it?

And another box

Another weekend of decluttering.    It took 4 trips to the tip to take some old wooden double glazed windows.  There were dozens of them.    We knew about two piles, but we found 2 more as we cleared the kitchen.

These are just a fraction of the windows that we took

We also took all the undonateable/unsellable/broken bits from the room my Dad used as his workshop, which was actually meant to be the new kitchen.

While my DB did the final sweep up, I went upstairs and emptied a load more stuff from one of the bedrooms,  mostly stuff that had gone mouldy or had been partially eaten by mice.

I found a large box of yet more papers.  These were from 1984 to 1990, and were from when my parnts were starting up on the smallholding.  Unlike the other filing,  these were all neatly organised.  Each year was in an envelope, and each month was staoled together within that.  I think it was because Mum was registered for VAT at that time, so careful filing was a must.

I took them home to scan, and these were much more enjoyable to do, because they were relatively well organised.  As well as bills, there were some good stuff for memoraabilia scanning.    There were many many many receipts for stuff relating to the building of the house, and I've kept as many of those as I sensibly can,  just in case the new owners are interested.  

Overall it was about 3000 sheets scanned from that batch.

I've got to destroy the originals now, plus the many many sheets of things that I didn't scan at all.

And I've got to organise the scans now, lol