Stuff used as other stuff

A guy I used to work with, I'll call him "Dave" because that's his name,
gave me two old storm windows he didn't want. (For those of you
located in the South, storm windows go on in the Fall and off in the
Spring, providing extra protection from Winter wind and snow)
I put one of them to work as a divider in Janie's art room.



The other one I made into a door for this built-in cabinet. I had some
glass shelves cut to fit, installed a couple old hinges and small handle
I had laying around and presto, a curio cabinet is born.



One of the shelves has this picture of my dad and his sisters back in the day.
Dad's been gone since 1993 but my Aunts are still getting around. The little
picture is of Janie's Dad and Mom. The log cabin behind them was in the family
somewhere.



A little toy horse, sheigh and a painting Janie's Great Grandmother
did many years ago. She painted it on a hand mirror.



I wouldn't necessarily call this items antiques but they do have personal
significants to us. That's what your house should look like anyway. Not
what it dictated on some TV show somewhere, but what you like.



This is Janie's Grandmother. I don't remember much about it except
that Janie liked this sort of thing and spent time with her looking at
old things in trunks when she was little. I think that's the way it is with folks,
a person developes a taste for antiques early and tends to stay with it
for life.



This is likely the best example. The butter churn to the left in this picture,
taken from over the refrigerator, was my Grandmothers on my Mother's side.
She died when I was very young, leaving me with only a couple of memories of her.

Mom kept this churn in the basement and never displaying it. For reasons
I may never know, I liked it, wanted it and asked for it when I was 20.
I know full well that behavior like that isn't very manly, but I didn't
seem to care about it then, and I curtainly don't care now. You've either got the
bug for antiques or not. I started early as did Janie.



So, do you have the antique bug? Do you find yourself collecting
rusty junk? What do you collect?