Furniture With A Past

The drawers in this furniture piece are gorgeous, quarter-sawn oak, and they started out in an old, turn-of-the-century drugstore in Tulia, Texas where they held pharmacy supplies. The drugstore was owned by my husband’s grandmother. When she later retired and sold the store she passed the drawers on to my husband’s mother who had this new base cabinet built to house the drawers, preserving the legacy of the business her mother had built. She kept it in her home for the next forty years, even leaving what remained of the labels for the pharmaceutical products on the original drawer hardware. Eventually, my husband inherited this piece, and I had to find a place for it to work in our home, that was already a co-mingling of his, mine, and theirs. It was big and heavy and not necessarily a style that fit with the rest of the house, but it held deep sentimental value for my husband, so I had to make it work.

I realized these drawers were the perfect size for CD and DVD storage, and that we had the base for a great entertainment center to hold our new flat screen TV. I drew up a design for a hutch unit that could rest on top to house the TV, my skilled cabinet man built it exactly to the specifications to line up with the base, and my furniture refinisher matched the old finish perfectly. We’ve end up with an entertainment center with modern functionality and antique aesthetic that preserves a piece of my husband’s history. He didn’t want to remove the old pharmacy labels, but the one that read “Feminine Products” disappeared mysteriously during the redesign process.