Back in November, during our maiden voyage to Urban Ore in Berkeley with my dad, we happened upon this amazing vintage crib. Though many layers of dirt and grime obscured its parts, I could tell that this was a special piece of furniture. It's made of solid wood, with many details, including the sets of red balls that spin on each end to entertain baby. It still had what looked like the original paint job, complete with toll-painted leaves on each end. And on top of each side railing, the name "Thayer" was stamped in 1950s vintage script.
After hauling out the pieces and putting the crib together right in Urban Ore, we saw that the crib was missing a couple of key pieces of hardware. Still, we were not deterred. We would have this crib. At $45, it was a steal compared to the price of new cribs today--even boring, cheap, mass-produced ones. More than that, it would be one of a kind when we were finished with it--and we would be reusing something that already exists in the world rather than supporting a big box store and consuming new merchandise.
That night, I scoured the Internet for information about this Thayer crib and the company in general. My findings were few and far between. All I could locate were furniture ads from the pages of Life magazine, but after perusing several of these I was confident that what we had found was a 1950s crib that had probably been part of a larger Thayer nursery set. Thayer apparently made nursery furniture with a variety of designs, from the orchard-type design of ours, to this lamb design (1955), to this design with a lamb and two bunnies (1954). Most of them seem to have featured the spinning balls on one or both ends--some with three, some with four, like ours, and some with five. From the ads I've seen, a Thayer crib cost from $29.95 for a plain one to $49.95 for one with the balls and more details. Thayer's tag line seems to have been "BETTER LIVING FOR BABIES"--which strikes me as pretty funny. {I suppose a stylish Thayer crib is a big step up from sleeping in a dresser drawer.}
The crib sat in our garage for a few months, accepting even more grime and more than a few cobwebs. Then came the exciting day when I hauled it up the back stairs for a thorough cleaning. It took three large buckets of scalding hot, soapy water to remove years of neglect. I then detached the hardware and painted the crib with white zero-VOC paint ($18.99/quart). I also sanded and painted the hardware with
Rust-Stop Oil Based Enamel paint ($4.99/half pint) and Cole painted the springs with Rust-Stop Spray Paint ($4.99/can).
Voila! The crib looks so clean and bright in all white. I especially like how the scalloping on the top stands out now. Eventually we'll paint the spinning balls on each end the same orange color that we used on the baby's dresser. We're also working right now to find new hardware to replace the missing pieces so we can put this thing together and see it in all of its restored glory.
To come: Part 2, in which I'll share the put-together crib, as well as the crib bedding and bumpers that Cole is planning to make.
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