Collectible Friday - Vintage Phones

Happy Spring!! Oh, Thank God. Though it looks a lot like winter but it is Spring. Oh, Thank God.

For collectible Friday, we are doing vintage phones. I love vintage phones, especially pink vintage phones. Oh sure, they don't have caller id, and sometimes they have temperamental wiring, but they work when the power goes out. And they are fun to look at.

With the exception of the black one, all of mine actually work and are in use. I have a cell phone, which I love, and in the kitchen I have a modern one but other than those, I use vintage.

The black phone is a ship phone. It was made to hang on the wall and you have to depress a button to get the handset off. This was so during rough seas it won't fall off. Plus, if you got hit with that handset it would HURT, that thing is heavy. I am going to have it rewired and hung up in the kitchen at the beach house.
The black and pink one is my favorite. It used to be by my bed. But both of my upstairs phones do not have ringers and so I needed to switch one out, so I put another pink one in my bedroom. The black and pink one hasn't found a new home yet, but it will. The little accessory laying next to it, is a dialer. Mine is a black poodle. These were made so that dialing wouldn't ruin a woman's manicure. You can find all sorts. I used to just use the end of a pencil but this is so much cuter. They come with a little clip that you can attach to your phone so they don't get lost. It is a very heavy phone.The two pink ones are from the 1960's and are commonly found, as is the yellow one.
The minty green one is a fabulous find. This is a Ericofon made by the L M Ericsson Company of Sweden. 1954 marked the beginning of production of the Ericofon. They were made for mostly industrial use, in particular hospitals. It was a one piece design which made it easier for patients to use. You pick up the phone and dial from the bottom. When you set the phone down, it hangs up. You just pick it up to answer. I love this one. Though it doesn't have a ringer, so you need another phone in the vicinity to know when to answer it. These are harder to find and slightly expensive. If you want a pretty color, you will pay more. I believe you can buy a ringer box at Radio Shack, but I haven't checked that out yet. They run in the $100.00 range to find one that works.

The yellow phone is what is known as a trim line phone. The smaller pink phone is called a princess phone. I know I feel like a princess whenever I use it. In the photo it is a little dirty. It is the phone I can get to the fastest upstairs, and since I am always decoupaging something, the phone is decoupaged as well. Someday soon I will fix that.

I also own (not shown) a bulldog phone. It is a big dog with the receiver being a bone. The dog barks instead of rings. It is cute but I find it hard to use, so I have it stored away.

The more common phones start about $25.00 and run up from there, depending on condition of phone, color of phone, and rarity of the phones feature.

You should give these a try. They are a little temperamental but overall fun to use. Plus, you can't go wrong with the color pink.

Fireplace Screen Project

I am a vintage gal. Both in age and decorating style. Throw in architectural salvage and I am super happy. I love to remake something old into something new again.

Here in Seattle we have some nice salvage building supply stores. I own all sorts of antique salvage. Our beach house kitchen was remade with salvage supplies. We have an old physics cabinet from a school that was remodeled. Our open shelving is wood that is for stair treads and the bead board that we used for the walls, is actually flooring turned around. We have gotten a lot of compliments and one or two job offers for us to redo their kitchens.

So I am always on the look out for cheap (or even better free) building materials. During the summer I bought a bunch of old shutters. It was $15.00 for the lot of them, which was about 8 or 9 shutters. The first group was used for a mini gate to keep the dog from heading down from the top deck to the bottom deck where the pool is. While he loves the water, he can't swim worth a lick, and would drown. And moron that he is, never remembers this simple fact. Hence, we have had to save him a number of times. Not anymore, since the lovely shutter gate.

The extra ones just hung out in the garage until this week when I decided I needed a new fireplace screen. The old one, while fine for the intended purpose, was unattractive and not a cute vintage one. So I hauled them out and remade four of the remaining 5 into a screen.

While this was a time consuming project, it was simple to do. First I removed all the hardware then I sanded and painted the shutters white, since they were a horrible brown color. I measured a slat and made a template for the size of paper I would need to cover each slat. I went to Michael's and bought a floral paper and a music note paper. This was on sale, at .29 per sheet. It is best to use a pattern paper that is an all over pattern as opposed to a stripe or something that you will have to make sure is lined up.

Then watching Tivo, I cut the paper out. It was a good use of Tivo and I didn't have to feel guilty about the television watching time, since I was accomplishing something. Win, win!

I used decoupage medium but you can use a watered down white glue. Then I just glued away. I did both sides of the slats, because I am anal that way but you can only do the one side that you will see. I also lined up what little pattern I had, again the word anal would be used here, and you certainly do not have to do this. You will need to keep opening and closing the shutters to make sure you do not glue them closed. Even if you do (and I can speak from experience in this area) you just wiggle them and they will open.

I spray painted the hardware chrome because I cannot stand brass but you can either buy new hardware or just use the old hardware. Then I assembled it back as a shutter set and placed it in front of the fireplace. Which by the way, is horribly unattractive. But as I don't plan to reside in this house much longer, see no reason to replace it.

When the fire is going, I can either open the shutters so I can view the fire or just remove it to the side.

With the exception of a can of spray primer and the paper, everything used in this project I already owned.

So there you have a winter time project.