Love the mirror!

I LOVE that mirror, too! It's stunning, and all of the items you show have quality written on them, which is why I think they're spoken for. The metal wall art doesn't do it for me, but French Provincial on the Maine CL is alive and well, although I don't know it ever sells. See one ad below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beautiful French Provincial Bedroom Set - $500

I have (and love) a similar mirror...
I hope someone is taking the rug under the bench?
Love it!

I LOVE that mirror, too! It's stunning, and all of the items you show have quality written on them, which is why I think they're spoken for. The metal wall art doesn't do it for me, but French Provincial on the Maine CL is alive and well, although I don't know it ever sells. See one ad below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beautiful French Provincial Bedroom Set - $500

Out of the pieces of furniture shown, the French Provincial is probably the cheapest furniture, it's Henry Link, and my parents bought this for my sister's room because she was only going to be home for a few more years.

The sofa and the love seat or canape are probably the highest quality pieces of furniture and they may not be spoken for because the sofa is very long, and both pieces would be really expensive to recover. The tufted piece is in mohair velvet, but I don't see the salmon color working in a lot of places.

One of my friends had to help dissolve her Mother's home and she too selected a similar mirror. While I thought it was a very formal piece she opted to hang it over her mantel in the family room - it's a stunning piece. Your 2 chairs are great pieces of furniture that can go just about anywhere. We always refer to that style as a club chair - not sure if that's accurate or not but we have 2 in our bedroom and most of the other bedrooms have one as well.

I've been seeing your sister's bedroom furniture painted (usually hardware is painted same color) and it doesn't look bad. Maybe a lot of the surprising picks are due to sentimental value, and they may think "eh" once they get something home... or no place to put/use, and it ends up in storage room or Goodwill pile.

Love the mirror you have dibs on.

The sofa that your father is concerned about? Who made it? I'll take it if no one in your family wants it : ) I even like the flamestitch--I'm assuming that it's woven, of course, since it's your family : )

That mirror is valid in pretty much any style. It will fit in with your furniture just fine.

I don't know that my sisters are that sentimental about the furniture, maybe just more practical because it is all sturdy and in good condition.

The sofa is either Baker or Henredon, and the bottom cushions buckle onto the deck and the side and back cushions are down-filled. It's a 60s version of a Federal or Regency 6-legged sofa. If I were staying here I would definitely take it. I think my father just wants to make sure it gets a good price if it is sold, too. It was the price of a small car back then, and my father took a 3rd position (part-time) to pay for the furniture in the house. When the furniture was paid off, he left that job and went back to two full-time jobs :)

The problem with a couple of the sofas in the house is not the depth. They are shallow compared to the overblown sofas of today, but they are Long. It would be hard to get it to the third floor living room of my new house without hoisting up the outside.

This is such a timely post for me..

We are going through the same thing with my grandmother who is 91 and just moved to a retirement apartment from the house she designed and built with my grandfather in 1969. You may remember you helped me choose a dining room chandelier to go with her French dining room set but that didn't clash with the other somewhat modern furnishings in my house.

Her situation is complicated by a stint in art school and a love of painting which pronounced 50+ oil paintings with no intrinsic value but very high sentimental value to my extended family.

As the only family member with a largish house and the one furthest away, it is difficult to make these types of decisions - if I don't take something chances are its destined for the yard sale. No one else really has room. But there are no "returns" if something doesn't work and I don't really have the sensibility to know beforehand especially since I can't see it in person. This is only furniture, and doesn't even take into account stuff like wedding gifts from 1943 - all glass it turns out since it was during the war; beautiful china bought in France and italy during my grandparents very short lived empty nester time together (my grandfather passed away in his 50s); and file cabinets' worth of genealogical data tracing our ancestry back to the puritans.

Like your dad, my grandmother is particularly interested that her stuff go to a "good home". In discussions of putting the house on the market, it's been brought up maybe she should take up the 40 year old carpet and expose the pristine hardwoods as a selling point. But she has babied that avocado wool carpet for decades and doesn't want to see it in the trash bin, and I can't say I blame her.

I love Chinese Chippendale.... why isn't someone pouncing on that desk?

For a desk, it's large, and it's a bureau plat, really, just three shallow drawers--not much storage. Too large for my new house (as a desk), in one sister's house (a townhouse) and my sister that probably has the room has no interest.

My father never really liked the Curtis Jere, he would bang his head on it when he lit the fireplace.

Ah, thanks, pal. My mother inherited a shorter, very uncomfortable version of that same sofa and I never wanted it. It seemed for *formal* visits only. I just never understood it. Your father's version looks much more comfortable and less formal, maybe because of the upholstery. My mother's was a cut velvet alternating with tapestry flower/vine stripes. SO formal.

But what a story about your father's paying for the furniture. *That's* how you handle debt.

That particular Curtis Jere line is my least favorite of everything they made. Kitsch and not in a good way, IMO. But people seem to want it...I'll take sea urchins or even birches any day : )

My dad favored a topographical map of the moon for over the fireplace, but when it came it was kind of glossy gray and plastic, and my mom did not want it put up as a focal point.

I think this would be done in more realistic materials today but this was the 1970s. Since we had a train set, the interior designer ended up choosing this.

I thought this was one of those things that would end up being left in the house, but it is now old enough that I guess people are interested in it and/or it is collectible.

It would be appropriate in my 1963 modernist, but I don't really want it. The mirror is more my taste.

We are in the wind up phase of the same thing. My dad moved into a 700 sq ft 1 BR apt from a 3 BR/study home with both formals as well as a breakfast room and family room. That's a lot of furniture, but most of it found homes with the three children and a few pieces were bought by the couple who bought the house. We took a lot of clothing and household goods for donation, but I can't think of any furniture that went. Can that be right?

I have the exact same rocker as in the 1st pic. Dh and I claimed it as a hand-me-down. I think it's beautiful.

It was my great-Aunt's, and she called it a nursing rocker because of the arm position (?). Unfortunately she had it recaned at a low point for this type of thing, and it was done in tan plastic of the type used to make lanyards and stuff at summer camp. If the caning had disintegrated a few years later, the craft was back on the upswing and it would have been done with actual cane again.

The dining room chandelier is being removed from the house, too. When I posted my parents' dining room a couple years back someone suggested getting rid of the chandelier and the hardware on the built-ins and replacing it with something inexpensive but updated.

The chandelier is a Williamsburg replica from Virginia Metalcrafters and the hardware is also 18th c., solid brass and very heavy. I think if some people on GW feel that way and they would get rid of it, it might as well be taken out first before the new owner does the same thing. The hardware will probably stay because it is a strange on-center dimension and I don't know who would use it, but the chandelier should stay with someone.

I think you are right to think there is a high probability the fixture would be replaced. I have always liked colonial brass fixtures, even when they were not in vogue, but I know I am a minority on that.

And I am going to sound like a complete venal snob here, but reproductions tend to transcent "revival" or "colonial-style" stuff...and I can guarantee the chandelier that is in there now is worth ten or 20 times what most people would replace it with. And where my dad lives, it would end up in the trash or Goodwill because most people wouldn't know what it was.

I'm truly fortunate that I grew up poor and didn't have any big decisions to make when my aunt went into a nursing home. Her mahogany dining room and jenny lind bed went to a friend who was knowledgeable and who loved antiques. The rest went to the trash. The pain from growing up abused caused me to not want anything she had. I did, however, end up with a Civil War relic--a chrystal salt bath that has a chip in it. Some pressed glass and nothing else with any value. My husband's family was the same, and nothing came to him at all.

The pain that aged assets cause is understandable, and it takes a lot of time to sort them out. I don't envy anyone that has to do it.

My father lived his teenage years in a house without electricity or running water. (They had an electric generator), but we still have things from that house. I slept for a number of years on a brass bed that we pulled out of the mud after the legs had broken through the rotten floor of the house after it was abandoned and taken over by squirrels.

I think this relative lack of things, and having to move a number of times in childhood is what has made him so attached to both his house, and the things he was able to put in it.

He still says that he would rather move out in a box (die in the house) than move.

It will be quite a process sorting and parceling out but I don't find it an onerous job, really. I think if something happened and it all evaporated tomorrow, that would be okay too, for us--not for him. But there really hasn't been any feeling that any of us "deserved" a particular item for a particular reason, and really we haven't even been interested in the same things. None of the bickering that one hears about. My parents educated us all (grandchildren included) and that is one very important legacy in itself, and I never felt like I needed or deserved more than that, (0r even that, really).

How fortunate that you and your siblings are able to share this endeavor without any hurt feelings. I imagine the process is bringing back memories of family times. How is your father handling the transition? Is he going to live with family? I think the 'guest room' you posted is in your sister's home.

My Mother made the same comment about 'leaving in a box' when the time came for her to move out of her home of 40+ years. Even though she was confined to a wheelchair and living in a split level on a steep hill in Pittsburgh she resisted mightily.

How will you incorporate the items you've chosen in your home?

Oh, he's back-pedaling fiercely, although he was the one who brought it up.

I think we are going to proceed with taking things out of the house bit by bit from rooms he doesn't go in, like the other bedrooms, and the basement.

We are going to keep the LR, DR, Library and Kitchen intact, as well as beds in all the bedrooms, even if their other contents go.

We don't feel that he needs to move completely, just that he should be able to stay with my sister, (or with me if I ever get into my house)--for a month or so here and there.

The problem is that he feels 'displaced' if it is not his stuff around him, and his stuff can't be three places at once. So, if there are bits and pieces in other places it helps. As soon has he had a room in my sister's house, he started identifying it as his room.

So the trick is going to be integrating enough to make him feel at home somewhere else without stripping his own environment.

I will be moving into my new house anyway so there will be a shift in my belongings anyway.

Your sister's furniture made me smile! It seems like every girl I knew had furniture like that back in the day! Mine was similar. It was off white, but instead of Louis XVI, it was faux bamboo with green on the rings. The set included a dresser with a hutch that had wire panel inserts and sheers on the doors, desk, cheval mirror, and a full size bed with a half canopy. My mother gave it to the housekeeper when she downsized a while back. Since I have boys, it's not something that would have worked in my house.

Good luck getting your father and his belongings situated!

Oh - I guess I thought you were already in your new place and that you had rented your old apartment to the trio of girls.