Packed up decorative Chinese dishes, pots and figurines, &c., ready to take up to Hill. I knew there was a reason I saved all that bubble packaging. Some day I'd need it!

Moved all the pictures, paintings, posters, photos I'd been stashing behind the coromandel screen out to the room next to the patio. Boxed up those pieces that hadn't already been boxed up in re-engineered boxes that once packaged six flat and unformed office boxes and lids. We'll take the boxes up in multiple trips rather than stash them away somewhere until The Big Moveout. A few boxes at a time I can handle.

Once I had the stuff I'd stashed behind the screen out of the way, I shifted the coromandel screen around -- in utter fear that I'd push it wrong and it would lose balance, collapse and flatten me while breaking into a zill pieces. The screen is eight feet tall and twelve feet wide -- eight panels with your usual tea garden scene on one side and a plant/flower design on the back. A dragon design chases around the outer frame, natch. The piece is Heavy. With a shove here and a shove there, I finally pushed the screen back against the wall in the living room and freed up a foot of space.

I placed a pair of chairs under the paintings of the Joneses which hang on the same wall the coromandel screen is up against. Put a skinny little dropleaf table between them.

Moved the funky Kroehler sofa that matches the chair up in my office in front of the coromandel screen. Moved the sofa that had belonged to his nibs' grandparents in front of the wall windows that look out over the patio and fishpond. Both sofas are old and worn. Rugs tossed on them cover the worn spots. The sofas are at right angles to each other in the NW corner of the room. Set the nested dragon box and the temple bells in the squarish space formed where the sofas meet.

Next, I moved the Victorian burgundy settee into the space next to the fireplace that we freed up when we took the dragon lamp up to Hill last weekend. The matching chair went on the other side of the fireplace.

Shifted this here and that there, rearranged lamps and tables until everything was where it should be.

I was admiring my handiwork when the cat wandered in from the nap she'd been taking on the guestroom bed. She doesn't like all this activity and furniture moving about. She wandered in and out of the boxes of magazines and piles of books, sniffed under the sofa and finally settled in her favorite spot to continue her nap.

Except for the boxes of magazines and piles of books that are cluttering up what should be open space, the living room's about where it should be for now. We'll have to move everything around again when it comes time for fixup and painting, but at least I have one room taken care of.

We'll see if our maven thinks the room still has too much stuff in it. Do we need to get the coromandel screen out of the house before we start showing it. Does it take up too much space? Is it too dark? Should we take the chair and settee out? Move the temple bells up to Hill, where they'll be eventually anyway? Get rid of some of the tables?

Time for me to go back down and start dealing with the boxes of magazines and piles of books, the clutter. Time to start work on the next room.

So much stuff and clutter to deal with.

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:27 PM|| |