last march, there was a frantic week where ben and I spent every night after work salvaging the original oak moulding out of our new house in preparation for the contractor to put up drywall over the irreparably-damaged plaster walls. we pulled a piece of trim down from the dining room windows and noticed that it had something penciled on it in cursive on the back side. “a secret message!” was my first, most logical, thought. we later later parsed it out to read “2939 N Robey.” an address. our address. today, we live on Damen Avenue, but it used to be called Robey (or Robie) Street. in 1927, it was renamed after the influential Jesuit priest Father Damen. so, not really a top secret message as much as it was likely the delivery address for the lumber. still, this lends credibility to our theory that the oak is probably original to the house – we know that it pre-dates 1927 at the very least. and the address gives me a place to start when it comes to researching our house’s history.

anyway, our plans to reinstall the original trim didn’t pan out, nor did our backup plan to sell all the trim to some reclaimed-wood enthusiast, but recently ben has been stripping and reusing some of it for other projects. and so this is what he made me for Christmas:

ben dug up this particular piece of trim, traced and preserved the writing, stripped and refinished the wood and built it into this coat rack. now it hangs in the landing just outside our apartment’s front door. how’s that for romantic christmas present?

(of course, the beautiful coat rack just calls attention to the fact that we need to gut the REST of the stairwell (refinish floors and stairs, new drywall, replace crappy motion sensor lights with period-appropriate fixtures and switched control, install trim around doors, strip paint off of transom window, replace handrail…but it’s a place to start. and to hang our coats. and our hearts.)