Tawanda Is Alive & Well!

No, I'm not obsessing about Halloween again. I am just posting this picture so you kind of see the piece of furniture I will soon be talking about! The bottom of this piece has another shelf and spaces for umbrellas. It is a hall tree and I have had it about as long as we have lived in this house - 38 years. I remember finding it in a J.C. Penney's catalog and I think it was about $150. It has sure paid for itself many times over.

Any way, as I began taking down my 4th decorations - finally!!!! - I was somehow in the mood to make some changes. I haven't felt this way for awhile - nor have I had the time - so I started looking at everything in the house as fair game. Oh boy did I have some ideas but sanity took over and before I had completely destroyed something of real value, I reined myself in and saw the hall tree for what it was - dated! I thought about painting it or just throwing it out but neither of those options really appealed to me. Then, I remembered a small desk we were no longer using and I went and dragged it out. I knew I saved everything for a reason! I tried the desk where the tree had been, but being the symmetrical person that I am, I didn't like the way it looked with the other things on that wall and knew it needed some height.

To make a very long story short, I thought about sawing off the mirror portion of the tree but then saw some screws on the back and figured they must hold the bottom portion on and how easy it would be to separate the pieces. After removing the 6 screws, I realized that that would have been too easy - there's always a story when I'm involved. So I got out my trusty "meat tenderizer". It has a nice wide flat area and I thought a few taps might nudge the pieces apart. I started hammering and before I knew it, the pieces were actually fracturing instead of just coming apart and that was all I needed to get the adrenalin going.

I found out that that hall tree was actually pegged together before the screws were added. As they say, "they don't make them like that any more". In any case, the back piece of the tree sort of looks like an old door with a mirror. I have it currently just wedged behind the desk and am going to live with it for a few days before I decide if I like it. If I do, there will probably be a few changes made but I didn't want to spend the day on one thing when there is so much else left to do.

This is how it currently looks. Once all of the 4th is down, decorating will happen here. What do you think? I do like the extra merchandising area, but I am afraid I am going to miss the functionality of the old piece. I don't know where we will store our umbrellas now, but I'm sure I will think of something. And boy, it has been a long time since I got to demolish anything. It felt good to have "Tawanda" back!!! (For those of you who aren't fans of "Fried Green Tomatoes", we got that phrase from that movie and use it whenever one of us "women" bring out our muscles and "get the job done" by ourselves without benefit of the male species!). Yeah girl power!!! Stay tuned and I'll show you how it evolves.