When a church decided to tear down their rectory and have a silent auction, I was able to find a few really useful items for the farmhouse!
Almost a year before my husband & I moved into the house I grew up in, I attended a Silent Auction in Paris, IL. The Catholic Church was auctioning off the contents of their rectory. I ended up with the winning bid on three items : a butler’s pantry, a scrub top table and a pair of wrought iron handrails.
The Butler’s Pantry
The process for the auction required the winning bidder to return on a second day to retrieve their items. Since the handrails were still attached to the rectory , we had to figure out how to get them out of the concrete!
My Dad was always willing to help out. He asked one of the neighbors to join us on our adventure and we set off for Paris, IL. with our tools, the pick up truck and a dolly. It was a HOT , Sunny, Humid August Day.
The butler’s pantry was a bit larger than I realized. It was 7 feet tall and 4 1/2 feet wide. I honestly don’t remember how Dad and Wayne got it into the back of the truck but they did. It had to go in first.
The Scrub Top Table
They loaded the scrub top table next. I wish I had a picture of what it looked like then. It had been stored in the basement of the rectory. At some point, someone had tacked a piece of red linoleum on top to protect the wood. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years.
Once I got it home, I pealed off the linoleum and cleaned up the wood. I ended up having the table painted. I replaced the knobs years later after we moved the table to Florida.
The Handrails
Getting the handrails out of the concrete was the real challenge! Wayne was a brick mason and had the tools to cut the rails out of the concrete footers . It was still a hard job but between the two of them , they got them unattached.
The above picture is a close up of how they looked when they were attached to the farmhouse.
Once we got our treasures back to the farm, Dad and Wayne unloaded the butler’s pantry into the pavilion. They decided to wait for a cooler day to install the railing on the porch. The scrub top table went into my vehicle so I could take it back to our house.
Moving the butler’s pantry into the farmhouse the next summer is a blur. I don’t remember the process but it must have gone thru the actual front door and then through the rest of the house in order to be placed in the gathering room.
I wasn’t going to take it to Florida but I ultimately decided that it would make a great storage piece. It was part of the 3 professional moving events. The movers decided to take the cabinet out of the house using the side door. One of the guys basically had to do the limbo to get the cabinet to go thru the doorway. It did not look like it was a lot of fun!
Several of the knobs were bent during the move. I replaced them with the larger diamond shaped knobs.
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