Merry Christmas!

Philly Architectural Salvage Locations... p3

The last Philly salvage place we check out was ReStore.

Overall: A. we'll definitely be back.

We got lucky and snagged a street parking spot right in front of the place. I'd imagine that any other time but in the evening you'd be able to find the same, since it is on a residential street.




It is a mid-sized loft-ish type warehouse where everything is super well organized, the place is well lit with natural light and the surroundings feel nice. The major bonus is you're not paying for the "nice feeling" surroundings, everything seemed fairly priced to me.

Vintage door knobs are pretty much automatically awesome in my book, but I went nuts for these milk glass knobs! They are pretty unique and are just gorgeous in real life. There was serious restraint on my end to hold back from purchasing them for the price of $30 a set. Only slightly higher than the normal brass or crystal sets they also had on the table.

Pete caught me eyeballing up antique tiles for our eventual fireplace(s). I'm leaning more toward old, original (and slightly ugly-ish, they are a brown and green tie-dye look) tiles for them while he like something less authentic but nicer looking.

Windows galore! Doors Galore!

I'm so glad we took the time to check out these Philly salvage and antique places. Not only are they so close to us, but they provided us with the chance to talk more about the upcoming renovations for the Wee house. Talking about the reno always gets our creative juices flowing again, especially when they have been stalled behind a long time of garage building. Makes me so anxious to get the garage done and move on into working on the house!

Dining Room Seating- Check!

Confession: After buying our fabulous new dining table in May, we moved the old dining set into the living room, with every intention of putting it up for sale immediately. We sold the set on craigslist in November.

Even I'm giving us the side eye glance for waiting so long on that one.

However, that means we did finally settle on seating for the new table. It was a really long process where we sat in countless chairs at so many different stores, brought home four options (that ultimately got returned), did hours of online browsing and had at least 3 blog posts ( here, here , and here ) devoted to the dining room alone. What can I say? I either make extremely fast snap decisions based on emotion or I like to beat an idea to death with thorough research and pro/con lists.

Our search ultimately ended with me sitting in a Home Goods chair looking extremely dejected and frustrated. Taking a thoughtful sip from my Starbucks, I looked up at Pete and went "Lets go with the couch and the stools. We both really like them and I'm tired of dealing with this crap."

Couch and stools. Um Eva, you're missing the "chair" part...

I'll backtrack to the start. It all started with this picture that I found floating around the blogosphere last year that eventually got sourced back to SouthernLiving.com. Everything about the picture looks so inviting to me. I loved the smaller in stature wood and metal table paired with the upholstered loveseat. Everything about this set up makes me want to plop down and have a cozy dinner at the table with Pete, something we rarely do.

When we came home with our new table, this picture popped back into my mind. So while searching for chairs, I also expanded my search to include an armless love seat. Which is why when I came across this love seat on overstock, I was uber excited to show Pete an example of how we could interpret the look from the inspiration picture. The loveseat was pricey at $300, but I figured if we ever tired of it at the table that I could easily find another place in the house for it.

Since we need seating for more than two people at the table we grabbed the another idea of using stools in place of chairs. That would open up and be a good balance to the bigger love seat.

The stools would be the CB2 Contact Stools I wrote about way back half a year ago. Pete loves them and now that we have then, I'm a fan myself. With their small size and simple look I thought the stools could pull furniture double duty by being movable seating and act as side tables if the need arose.

They are a great as seating option for kids because they are super solid, spin in circles and can be wiped down. A few days after ordering the stools showed up on our front porch. We almost had an "oh no" moment after placing them at the table, because they came close to not fitting. Thank goodness that even despite not measuring the height of the table they did end up working just fine. You think we would have learned that by now, but always freaking measure!

Which is how we ended up with this:

Next instalment: I'll tell the story of how we did eventually end up with two chairs. The search restarted with a comment from my friend who mentioned that she'd cut someone in order to snag a spot at love seat at our next girls night....

Philly Architectural Salvage Locations... p2.

I'd grade the Antiques Exchange a B-, depending...

Not horrible but I doubt we'll be jumping up and down to get back to the place. The place just didn't fit well with us and our needs (budget) right now, but there we do think it is worth another look at a different time.

Major bonus is that this is right down the street from Standard Tap.

(Go and eat there. Delicious food and great beers)



I'll start off with my biggest problem of the place- everything was really overpriced. Which is why you all you see are price tags that have faded ink and have started crumbling. You know when the tape yellows and starts to flake away? Lots of tags just like that. I also liked the "hold" on an item from June of 2009. Just a hunch, but I have a feeling that they aren't coming back.


The other thing that really got me and knocked the grade down was that I'm pretty sure a large amount of certain items they had were reproductions. Really crazy cool looking reproductions, but I take issue whomever is trying to pass a modern piece as an antique. Especially when you're talking a cost of multiples of thousands of dollars.



Other than those negatives, we did like poking around all the floors and saw some neat stuff.



Our favorite was the door section, where we found some awesome old pocket(?) doors that had glass inserts with the original rolling hardware attached. Love them and the fact that they aren't something you always come accross while shopping. When it comes time for the Wee house, we'll definately try to come up with a place for a door like this.

I really adored this Victorian fireplace surround. Something about its smaller size and toned down details really attracted my eye. I forget the exact price, but I do remember it made me laugh.

This cooper antique coffee urn made us stop in our tracks with its large size and shiny looks. However we didn't love the $1,4oo sticker price. Shame that is so completely out of our budgets, this would look awesome in an antique kitchen or dining room.

The top floor was really cool, it was amazingly bright with natural light thanks to the skylights, but was really run down ( complete with graffiti). You could tell it was the area where things went when people stopped caring about them.

If these pictures pique your interest or you're planning on visiting Philly for another reason, then I will say it won't be wasted time or effort to plan a quick stop at the Antiques Exchange. Just don't bank your hopes on it and bring a fat wallet. Info in case you want to check it out for yourself:
http://www.architecturalantiques.com/
715 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia

House of (Holiday) Cards

From: Eva
To: Peter

Christmas card?

From: Peter

That is really funny. I like the hat. I don’t need to be in the Christmas card anyway. Leave it solely up to the Jewish girl :)

From: Eva

I figured that you could be on the inside of the card. Maybe even the back!

And it is not my fault you didn’t want a picture with the hippo at south of the border!

What about this one?

Better?

Maybe we should take a picture with the garage? Since that is really our baby this year?


From: Peter

Are you really thinking about getting a Christmas card this year of just us? We never send them out. That sets an expectation for the next 100 years you know.

From: Eva

I am contemplating it... I feel like it is my job as a wife or something to send them out...
I loved getting all the cards from my friends last year. They made the house look so festive!
I’m seriously getting into the holiday spirit this year. Be prepared for major January Post-Holiday sadness.

Plus, Shutterfly is offering 50 free cards to bloggers.

I like free.

From: Peter

I agree. But I spent many years setting the negative precedence that cards are stupid. I like to expect them, just not give them. You know, like any selfish person would do!

****End of Email Chain***

* edit... Shutterfly, you disappoint me by punking out on the free card promise. Despite that I shilled your products like a two bit table dancer on my measly blog I got nada from you.

-signed-

sad cardless eva

Wrapping up for the holidays!

Much like a lot of people, Thanksgiving was the official kick off to our holiday season. We took a long look at the December calendar and saw that it was packed with obligations. Which is when Pete and I decided that it was time to pack up the garage work for the winter. There are people to see, presents to wrap and champagne to drink every weekend! Sad as it is to have halt the work that was rolling along I would be lying if I said that I didn't need a break from the garage. Cause I really do.


As much as I love the garage and am having fun building it, working outside in the winter on construction is a hard way to spend all your free time and every weekend daylight hour. Work goes slower cause you're slower to get things done. The wind hurts your face. You come home with sniffles everyday. The sun sets before you know it. And we have a lot of limitations on what we can do because of the weather (such as no painting).


No one really gives you a medal when your eyeballs freeze or snot pours out of your nose all day long on job site. And I'm not into doing things just so I can say I did and be a DIY Topper.


Example of the DIY Topper: " Well I worked outside on my garage during the biggest snowstorm the east coast has seen in a 1,000 years."


One cold and windy Saturday we double layered and headed over to check off in our pre-winter to-dos for the garage.


I moved our considerable sized stash of awesome old oak planks out from the rusty and crusty lean-to, into a much more suitable home in the garage.




All while Pete worked on a temporary winter wall for the back side of the garage.


We towed in Pete's someday project car, the '72 Land Cruiser. It proved especially challenging because of the one flat tire. But now the Land Cruiser lives in the garage until Pete has time to work on it. Which will be in about a decade.

And then we put up our winter " garage doors", which are in the form of plywood.

I'm ready to change gears for a little while!

Philly Architectural Salvage Locations... p1.

Even though our feet are firmly planted in the demolition part of the wee house renovation, we still can't help ourselves when it comes to checking out items for the future rebuilding stage. We like to look for the items we know we'll need or want (eventually). Shopping architectural salvage/antique places really helps to fuel the creative process for us and we get a ton of light bulb moments while browsing around. Almost like we're building an inventory or mental check list of certain things.


Because of our constant searching regarding anything house related that is old and awesome, we try to check out almost every salvage place we hear about within a few hours of driving distance. Unfortunately that means we've hit some dud places along the way, in addition to our perpetual fave spots. Which is why when we saw Provenance featured on a DIY network show we wrote down the name so we could a) remember it and b) make plans to check it out.

There is a small parking area outside the warehouse and you just walk right in the open door.

The warehouse for Provenance is large, but not huge and overwhelming. Something I appreciated because those monster sized warehouses tend to feel a little creepy when you get to a dark corner.

I LOVED how nicely everything is arranged inside. It is about as neat and organized as I think a architectural salvage place could ever be. Makes it about a million times easier to shop the place when you don't have to constantly dig out items just to even take a look at them. I'm not a gal that is afraid to wade through the muck and get her hands dirty while searching for a gem. But I know not everyone is like that and that some people don't always have the time to hunt down that *one* item. For those that don't like a hot mess of a salvage location- this is the place to go.

I want to make out with this door because it is just that awesome. It is almost exactly what I want to put in the front of the wee house (eventually). I die for its transom. and the hardware. I wonder if the house wants this door as a holiday present...

Just a few old glass knobs...

Small mantles...

Big mantles....

Antique heat registers, something we're definitely planning on incorporating in the Wee house.

The outside area....

and there was so much more inside that we didn't snap pictures of.

We got to chatting with one of the partners for a bit and he filled us in on the business and how they operate. Provenance definitely is a place we'll be going back to, and I'm thrilled that it is so close to us and walking distance to one of our favorite burger places in Philly, Standard Tap. Makes me so excited to move on with the Wee house renovations. Now if only the garage would ever get itself finished...

* this is all based on our own personal experience and you must be out of your gourd if you think I got compensated in any way for writing this. I just like spreading the good renovation word around.