Vashon Island is only accessible by boat or plane, and we have our own garbage facility where you have to pay to dispose of garbage. So it is not surprising that things, like furniture, electronics, clothes, toys, appliances, etc...tend to stay on island. There is no shortage of garage sales and estate sales and they occur year round. We have benefited immensely from this phenomenon both in passing things along and scooping things up.
One such find was this wonderful thing, salvaged from Vashon High School.
This beauty was used in shop class for storage. And bonus: all of these heavy weight cardboard boxes came with it too. They were mostly empty, but there were a few little treasures to discover.
When I saw this cabinet for sale on one of the island Facebook pages, I knew right away I had to have it. But I had no idea where it was going to go. It was very very tall. The only place it would fit was in the main living room of the church, which has very tall ceilings. Patrick and I tried it in there, but it wasn't quite right. And since we planned to use it for art supply and craft storage, we really wanted to place it in either the outdoor office spaces (These are being built...more on those later...) or in the basement as a separation between the guest room and my current office space.
Our solution was to separate the top from the bottom, which was surprisingly easy.
So in a single afternoon, we repurposed this Vashon High School shop cabinet into something just as beautiful and useful as it already was. Here it is completed and in use. It makes a great display for Rosie's artwork. And as you can see, we left the mysterious little pink foam balls just as they were...as a nod and thank you to history.
As with all of our island-found treasures, we taped an envelope to the underside explaining the origin of the piece. So...someday, 100 years from now, when these cabinets find their way to another garage sale or estate sale here on Vashon Island, the history of the piece is not lost.
