Jared and I watched a marathon of West End Salvage on HGTV this weekend. We typically start weekend mornings with coffee, steel cut oats, and HGTV- it’s a fabulous combination and I highly recommend it. But this Saturday, after an early morning of bath showrooms with our cousin Nick, we vegged out in front of the TV sort of napping and sort of watching West End Salvage.
West End Salvage is a show on HGTV about a store in Iowa and the people that work there. They buy unique items from “pickers” that they sell in their store or turn into unique pieces of art or furniture.
When we were in Richmond, there was an architectural salvage yard called Caravati’s Inc. that we loved! It was much more of a warehouse with rows of doors and windows and banister spindles than a combination of found pieces and antiques but it was so fun to walk around. Anyone with an appreciation for architecture and design would be blown away by these type of stores.
So far I’ve only heard of two in this area. Restoration Resources in Boston and Architectural Salvage Inc. in Exeter, NH. Hopefully, Jared and I can get to those in the next few weeks. I’d love to find something local with a story for the house. Something like these…
My mum and aunts and grandmother always shopped for antiques when I was little but they were more “collectors.” They would scour the antique stores by our cottage in New Hampshire for Nippon, Waterford Crystal, and Hummels. I’m more interested in the rustic/industrial stuff like barn doors, old jugs and crates, and anything that could be turned into furniture or actually used.
I think it’s one thing to display antiques, it’s another to put them to good use. One of my favorite memories is of Christmas Day at my Mimi & Grampy’s house. Mimi would serve a beautiful fruit salad for dessert and we actually ate it our of her small, lovely Nippon bowls. It’s so frozen in my mind I can actually remember how it felt to scrape my spoon gently across the fine, hand painted porcelain. I’d love to give my own kids and grandkids that kind of memory.
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