of sorrow and salvage. Op-Shop Show-Off Feb 12th 2013

       


   











                 i love mantelpieces.  a so much more alluring holdall of important-junk-that-should-not-be-lost than the fridge, it's a picture frame for the centre of gravity in the living room if you still prefer a fire and a book over tv; and it's always the best spot in the house for displaying your treasures. you may recall the lovely but short lived linky mantelpiece monday. as a mantelpiece afficianado i blogged all three of my mantels; my favourite the grand red brick mantelpiece which the earth quake commission had just advised us was loose from the wall after the christchurch earthquakes.
RIP redbrick mantelpiece. the earth quake commission giveth and the earthquake commission taketh away. despite having originally identified the damage (we were oblivious), numerous subsequent assessments over 2 years, and telling the contractors they were working on a repair strategy, 3 days into the repair work on our home they 'declined' our claim that it was earthquake damaged. we realised why when we brought in a builder to independently assess it. a repair would cost $2000+. oh, and the bull nosed bricks are no longer made in new zealand, cue expensive import from europe. oh why oh why did i comment to the assessor that we wouldn't accept a replacement as it was a key feature of the house. s.t.u.p.i.d! why oh why did we complain (fruitlessly) about the bad attitude of the assessor on her previous visit? i.d.i.o.t! oh why oh why didn't we just opt out? l.a.z.y!
to add insult to injury the builder told us it was dangerous despite our having screwed it to the wall, and that the repair contractors shouldn't be working around it (nor one would have though should a toddler have been playing around it for two years, but though EQC eventually worked out that the damage was not theirs to fix, they totally missed its dangerousness. priorities huh!)
in the absence of a spare $2000, or the desire to halt work on the half-gutted house mid-repair a few weeks short of  having a baby, to take EQC to court, Terry pulled it down. i cried. mainly due to the feeling of utter powerlessness with EQC. perhaps partially due to preggy hormones. but i did love it, and i do miss it. the red brick made me feel connected with my history; all my pre-new zealand homes and hearths, schools and university.
terry found this photo behind it the mantel, of the (local) Springbank Hunt, in 1930. what on earth the thing is in the foreground they caught i don't know! less romantically he also found a load of drug related needle paraphernalia behind there too (it was a dodgy rental before we bought and renovated it).
he dried my tears not with a hanky, but with a beautiful and totally in keeping with the period features of our house, arts and crafts rimu fire surround he found at a salvage yard in Addington. it had been removed from a demolished-due-to the-earthquake house, the original address pencilled on the rear.  we added our own story of how it came to be in our home (minus the anti-EQC vitriol, ahem) and slipped in a photograph of the original before affixing it to the wall.
it was surprisingly inexpensive, and miraculously got cheaper between Terry telling the salvage store staff his tale of EQC woe(s) and picking it up to take home the next day. surprising how the small kindnesses of strangers can totally wipe out some big bad feelings. i must remember that. though the bill hammond litho can no longer hang above it, the len castle pottery is too wide to sit atop it, and it will be a very long time until we can afford a wood burner to sit in it,  i can't wait to unpack, and play around arranging our treasures about it.

postscript- i shall endeavour to do a small kindness or two myself on The Sisterhoods Kindness Day, this Saturday, 16th February. want to too?

are you an Op-Shop Show-Off?

it’s charitable, green, cheap, exciting, fun, nostalgia inducing, potentially lucrative and often just plain necessary. whatever your reason for second-hand shopping we’d love it if you joined us on Tuesdays here at blackbirdhasspoken.blogspot.com for Op-Shop Show-Off day, a linky open to all, all week, to link up a blog post about any aspect of your second-hand shopping life.

tell us your op-shopping philosophy, or divulge your secret hunting techniques. let us know about your wants, or skite (English translation= “show-off “) about your amazing finds. review the best op-shopping spots in your town, or request or give information on your fascinating finds, you’ll always be talking to an appreciative audience here.


How to link up?
1.   post your blog post. 

2.   link to Op-Shop Show-Off in your blog post, so your blog readers can come over
      and peruse or post in the linky too

3.   scroll to the bottom of my latest Tuesday Op-Shop Show-Off post and click on the    
      linky tool, then follow the 3 easy steps


4.   don't forget to leave me a comment to let me know you linked up

5..  grab the Op-Shop Show-Off Button from my sidebar to decorate yours (paste the
     code into a HTML gadget under the 'add a gadget' part of the layout section in 
     blogger and save)