There was a crash in the middle of the night. The Queen got up to investigate but could not find anything amiss. But you can bet that I found something when I went for the morning paper.
The mirror appeared to be the victim of midnight kitty horseplay. The fall took its toll on the antique frame. I remember prowling around a dark and dusty antique shop with my mother when she found it sometime in the 1950s. My best guess is that the heart pine frame was made sometime around 1840 and started its life with a gesso base and a painted woodgrain finish. It was probably stripped sometime in the early 20th century when the original portrait was replaced with a heavy mirror. By the time my mom found it, the mirror itself was pretty old and had a small defect right in the middle. So I grew up looking at this mirror. Every time I passed that mirror I saw the defect. It made me stop and look closer at the frame. I could see where some craftsman had laid in a carefully carved patch on the inner edge.
This occasion would be a great time to downsize some more and pitch the old thing. But with my childhood long gone and with my mom passed on, this frame has become one of the few tangible links to my past. Perhaps it could be saved. I carefully cleaned up the glass shard mess and took the sad little frame into the workshop to assess the damages.
Overall, it was in reasonable shape. Of course the frame had blown apart, but that could be fixed by pounding on the corner nails. But there was more–like this broken corner. A little glue and finish would fix that.
The big dinger was on the inside frame around the previous patch.
Not only was there missing wood, the edge was thin and flimsy. The crack extended over a foot through wood that was barely 1/16″ thick.
At least I could get started think about the future. One corner was open and I removed all of the nails. One corner was firm so I left it alone. I knocked the other two apart and removed the nails. After doing this, the frame seemed to be holding up pretty well. I glued up the corner and replaced a divot on another corner and began to ponder my next move. Could this frame be saved and how? What would mom think about it?