Basement Treasures: Family Heirlooms

 

A stroll into the basement in search of some Basement Treasures uncovered this family heirloom.  This dollhouse was hand-built by my Grandfather and given to my mom who owned and operated a preschool in our basement.  He also made a copy of this dollhouse for a raffle (see picture), so there is or was another house just like this one.  

My grandfather was a Methodist minister, but I knew him better for the things he built.  He crafted a special item for my brother, sister, and me that we cherished as children.  My sister received a dollhouse that I have no memory of what it looked like, my brother received a red barn that he and I played with often, and I got a rocker that was a green turtle which I quickly outgrew.  I still have the green turtle rocker that will likely show up in a future "Basement Treasures" post, but both of my children used and enjoyed the rocker.  My hope is that my girls' children will also be able to use the rocker someday.  

I received the dollhouse when my mom was clearing out her house after she closed the preschool.  I have two girls who at the time were young and of age to play with dolls and dollhouses, so that is how it came my way.  My girls loved the wood floors and wallpapered walls that my grandfather so carefully hung and created.  He hand-created each wood shingle on the top of the house and inserted windows.  What can't really be seen is that the front of the house and the back of the house slide off to give full access to the interior of the house.  There is also a panel of the roof that can come out to give access to the attic.  This house has brought years of fun to so many children.  

Me and my Grandfather  and the twin house

What is sad to me is that it now sits in the corner of our basement and is only thought of when I have to reset a fuse in our own house.  Its purpose now is to wait for a new generation of children in my family.  It is in some disrepair with some missing windows and wallpaper curling up and off the wall.  I think I look forward to the "grandfather" duty of making those repairs in retirement sometime in the future in anticipation of grandkids myself.  That is years away but for now, it is a classic family heirloom that hides in the corner of our basement as a "Basement Treasure."  

Update:  10/27/24

I found a new home for the dollhouse.  I was sharing the story of the dollhouse and my grandpa at work when one of my colleagues mentioned that her husband and daughter like to work on projects, especially reclamation type projects.  So, long story made short, the dollhouse eventually went home with them so they can make it a family project to fix up the dollhouse.  When they came to pick it up in their pickup truck, it was sad to see it go, but I was excited for the look in her husband's eye when he saw the dollhouse.  I shared with him how it was built and the things that had fallen to disrepair.  His interest and excitement to work on it was clear, which made it much easier to be able to say goodbye to a piece of our family history.  

Storeroom Treasures part two: Old Equipment

Sometimes when I head into that storeroom in our house, I find some things that are so far removed from my memory.  Things that are obsolete in today's world, but for one reason or another seemed important to keep.  I came across a box that hasn't been opened in a long time because it found its way to the bottom of a pile of boxes.  I uncovered this box and popped off the lid to expose some old electronic equipment.  

The contents of the box included a VCR, a random remote control, a variety of different cords, and a digital television antenna/receiver.  This box is in the storeroom for several reasons even though the overarching question still is, why?  

Does anyone else keep a VCR around because of old family videos?  I think that is the only reason that VCR made it into the box. I know that there are also videotapes of some stage shows I did when I was in high school, and my wife has some videotapes of some dance shows.  What is funny is that none of these video tapes are in this box with the VCR.  That means that either we have discarded those tapes or there is another box somewhere filled with those tapes.  Upon inspection of this VCR, I discovered that there are a couple televisions in our house that do not have the RCA cable connectors for this old tape player, so it is almost completely obsolete.  

I kept the digital receiver from a time when we cut the cord and just watched the local digital, broadcast  channels.  That experiment lasted about a year.  It saved a ton of money that year, but in the times before streaming services, the Netflix DVD's just didn't come fast enough in the mail, and we went back to cable services.  I think I kept the digital receiver because I have dreams of cutting the cord again.  What I have discovered is that our local cable provider really offers reliable Internet service with a minimum cable channel list that it makes sense to carry this service.  So there sits the digital receiver in a forgotten box in the storeroom. 

This box also has a number of random cables including more coaxial cable than I think any room needs, an Hdmi extension cord, and some speaker wire.  Oh, there is a remote control from another VCR that apparently didn't make the cut, but the remote snuck in to this box to live another day.  

The best part of this box are the memories that are in here.  A silly box of random, old electronics has memories?  Of course, I remember all the rooms that I set this or other VCR's up in, from college apartments to houses long gone.  I remember the rooms and even some of the movies I watched on machines like this.  Boxes with old equipment like this are always filled with memories.  I realize that these boxes can't stick around forever, but while they are here in our attics, closets, or storerooms, they are worth a few minutes of time to reminisce.  Maybe even a little reflection is deserved to decide if boxes like these should go to the curbside to make room for new boxes that years from now will bring up a new collection of forgotten memories.   

Storeroom Treasures: The Sump Pump

The sump pump scares me to death.  Why?  It has nothing to do with the little spiders that hang out near it.  It has nothing to do with the hole it fills in the basement.  What scares me is when I don't hear from it especially on a wet, rainy day.  In fact, this little motor instills so much fear in me that I got a friend for it as a backup when things get hard.  Regardless of my fear of this "storeroom treasure," it taught me a lot about my family and how quickly we come together when things get tough.  

About a year-and-a-half ago, my fears came true when we
received about 7 inches of rain in a matter of hours.  I came home from work to have my family show me the "lake" that had appeared in our backyard.  As I looked out on the extraordinary amount of water in our backyard, my heart jumped as I realized I hadn't heard that soft hum from the basement.  I ran downstairs and did the hard right "U" turn into our storeroom where the little motor and his friend live only to see water rise out of the hole.  I hollered to my family to get towels as I ran back up the stairs to the garage to get our shop vac.  By the time I got back downstairs, water has spread across our entire basement.  It was less than 3 minutes.  

It was an incredible night of frantic salvaging of stuff that we deemed important but had been sitting on the basement floor.  All this salvaging while also trying to stop the flow of water into the basement.  I finally reached down into the sump pump hole to discover that both pumps were running but just couldn't keep up.  I finally mustered both of my daughters who were scared and confused.  I got them each buckets and I started bailing water out of the sump pump hole.  They sloshed through the water to the basement bathroom and dumped the water from their buckets into the toilet.  As one daughter went to dump her bucket, I would fill the other.  All the while, my wife was in the living area of our basement, running the shop vac and trying to save our stuff.  About an hour after the rain had stopped, each girl had taken a break to eat a very late and cold dinner.  I continued to bail the sump pump hole.  Finally, an hour after the rain stopped, I noticed that I was making progress and the water fell below the pit line.  Then another 20 minutes, the pumps caught up and could expel all the water that was still rushing into the hole.  

It was an exhausting, frustrating, frantic night.  I sent the girls to bed around 10:30 and my wife and I continued to clean up water and dirt until about 1:00am.  The next morning my oldest daughter and I moved everything out of the basement to dry out in the 90-plus-degree, humid garage while my wife and youngest daughter ran to the hardware store for supplies.  Over the next several days, we tore out all the trim and flooring and brought in professionals to finish the job.  It took about 3 months before our basement was back to normal.  

The sump pump scares me, but when it failed it was amazing to see my family come together.  We "survived" our own tragedy of seeing some really special items (Christmas decorations, record albums, collections, etc.) destroyed and our house, which always seems "safe and sound," flooded.  The four of us fought hard to keep the damage to a minimum without complaint and we worked together.  I never wanted our sump pump to fail or our house to be damaged, but without that, I wouldn't have the satisfaction of looking back and seeing us all in that moment.  

We still have the same two sump pumps in the basement, and we have taken several precautions like everything on the floor of the storeroom is in plastic tubs, and we keep the buckets and shop vac next to the sump pump.  We also added a water level alarm.  Probably the most important thing is as a family, we have each other.  We know that we can count on each other when things get tough.  There may be some shouting, maybe some tears and loss, but we are there to back each other up.  I know that in times that may be less frantic than water filling the basement and in times that could likely be even worse, we've got each other's backs.  When it comes to that, I am a pretty lucky guy.