The buffet

Before
After
My Grandma Mary passed away in August. A little while after her passing, her possessions were dispersed among her 10 children. I always remembered that buffet, in her TV room, where I would sit on the couch near Grandma and where she taught me how to cross-stitch. She kept her sewing supplies in the middle drawers and the gambling chips (a favorite toy of all the grandchildren) in the right-side cupboard. She hung her decorative dishes above it on the wall and over the years, the buffet was a little battered, but mostly just forgotten. When I asked my Dad about the buffet, he didn't know which one I meant, no one really did and so when his turn came around he asked for it, for me. The buffet was my great Grandmother Allen's before it was my Grandmother's. It sat in her home in Draper for years and when she moved in with my grandparents, it moved with her and now, it moves on to me. When I received it, I opened the drawers, and although my Aunts had cleaned out Grandma's possessions, there were still sewing pins left in the cracks of the drawers, a reminder to me of my memories with Grandma.

I had the piece refinished a few weeks later. The woodworker came to look at the piece and was in awe. Not only was this a Duncan Fife (Phyfe) piece, made of rare Peruvian Mahogany in the early 1900's, but he also found an old newspaper placed in the base of the furniture, underneath the bottom drawer, that traced the piece back to Oregon where it was made. Pork Loins were cents on the dollar, Maxi pads, the same. He took the piece to his shop and returned it three days later, looking just beautiful and perfectly restored. Now the piece sits on the long wall in my entryway, home again in Draper.