The Wanderlust Lady and the Door to Door Salesman - 30

February 4, 2013

 

The good weather was back again at the start of the next week, so I bit the bullet, and
went for painting the fascia boards and other bits of outside woodwork. For preparation, I just washed it down, did a bit of light sandpapering, and then did an undercoat followed by gloss top coat. It worked a treat using Fred's idea of a small roller on a pole (I used the kitchen broom and tied the roller handle tightly to that).

Once I finished the outside house painting, and with the weather still being cooperative, I did a bit more gardening. I cut back the hedge by about a foot – which made the garden much lighter – and by removing most of the branches on the inside of the hedge, it meant that the garden in effect recovered half a meter of space for planting flowers.

By Wednesday the winter returned, and I was happy to be back inside the relatively
warm and dry house. I finished off the second coat on the woodwork by Friday and was beginning to think I could almost call the job done. I did realise that a second coat on the walls would be much better, and as I had time (and cash) to spare from the £250 allotted
for supplies and equipment, I decided to buy another two 5 litre cans of matt white from Tom.

However, the post on Friday brought me some real mail – not just the advertising junk
that is usually pushed through the door.

The first letter was from the Manx Museum. They were very interested in buying the
pictures themselves, for the museum, as they didn't have many of his water colours – but they could not commit themselves without first seeing the artwork. One of the employees of the museum would be in the Manchester area in early March. The letter asked if he could come and visit me and inspect the pictures, with the view to buying them if they proved to be as I had described them. They were thinking of approximately £500 for the four pictures with original frames, but that price might be lower depending on the actual condition of the work.

That was exciting, and very promising. I was hoping for more like £1000 for the four –
but knew that whoever bought them would need to spend a lot on restoring them.

Then I opened the second letter, and my world fell apart. It was from Mrs. Mills. She
wrote:

Dear Stan,

I hope you are getting on all right with the painting. Do give us a ring to tell us about it if you are having any problems. Are you still thinking you can meet the March 4^th date for it going on the market?

As we want the house to be as streamlined as possible before the pictures are taken
for the estate agent, could you make sure that any unnecessary furniture and other items are removed. I think as far as furniture to be kept goes, I would limit it to the three piece suite, the bookcase, the dining room table and chairs, and the bed, wardrobe and
dresser in the bedroom. All the furniture from the upstairs can be thrown. I'll leave it up to you how to dispose of that and you can keep any money you make if you sell it privately. If you have to have house clearance people in, it will cost something, so let us know
about that.

I've been going through the documents in the filing cabinet with a fine tooth comb.
And I came across something that Cousin Minnie had started to write some time ago. She headed it, “My assets” and wrote down silver and gold, but didn't go into any details other than writing Victorian – 18. Do you have any idea what that might refer to? We certainly didn't see anything either silver or gold when we went through the house – and that only leaves the attic. So when you go through the things there, please send us a list of whatever you find – so that we can decide whether we want to have it sold at an auction or whether we will want to keep it ourselves.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours,

Edna Mills

 

Why was it that each time I felt my life was on the up, something happened to bring me back down to earth? I obviously had to tell her about the silver – or at least some of it. There was no way I could pretend that it wasn't here – not with Minnie having mentioned it and all. But lucky for me, there was no mention of numbers of items, or what kind
of gold. And the Victorian 18 – might have referred to a date, and she needed to check to find out the exact year.

But it might be a trap. She might know a lot more about the silver and gold, and be
waiting to see if I'm being honest about it. They know that if I get accused of theft again, there will certainly be a prison sentence waiting for me.

My one consolation is that she never mentioned pictures at all. Either Minnie didn't
know they were valuable, or she hadn't got around to putting them on her list. Or, I thought, maybe it was another trap. Maybe Mrs. Mills again was waiting for me to volunteer information that she already knew.

With all these ideas buzzing in my head, I decided to go and get my paint. At least that
aspect of this job was going to be completed well and on time – and hopefully, with Fred's help I might get more work in the future in the same line.

The paint shop is almost next door to the jewellery shop where I bought my bracelet. I
supposed that I'd have to sell it back to them – either for cash – or in order to buy some more sovereigns to replace the ones that were here. I'd heard that the price of gold was still going up – which might mean my bracelet would be worth more than I paid for it – but so would the sovereigns that I wanted to buy back.

The sign stood out in front of the shop. “We buy gold, silver and platinum for cash”.
I would need to go and visit this man again, and see what the situation was, but first I would have to scrub up my bracelet and get rid of the shoe polish that I'd spread so liberally over it during the last few months. Lots of it was embedded in the twists of the
design and it wouldn't be an easy job to get it all out. I didn't even know who I could ask about it. The internet would probably have some suggestions, but would the library let me use one of theirs? I could but ask.

So after the paint was bought and brought home, I went back to the library. I explained
to the librarian that I wanted to know how to clean gold – did she have any suggestions?

She looked for reference books, but as I suspected, she found nothing that was of
any value.

“I suppose there might be suggestions on the internet,” I put, hoping she would take
up the hint.

“Oh, I dare say there will. Do you have a computer at home?”

“No, I'm afraid I don't.”

“Well, I suppose I can book you in on my account, just for this time,” she said. What
a nice lady.

So without revealing to me her various passwords, she primed a computer and said that I could use it for an hour.

I searched on removing shoe polish, and it came with several options – jewellery
– especially gold chains – that might be useful – then there was a section which included gold in the list of household products that might be contaminated with shoe polish.

I started with the suggestions for cleaning jewellery. Warm sudsy washing up liquid with a cotton bud was suggested or a soft baby toothbrush. It said not to use toothpaste or baking soda on gold jewellery. Avoid drying with paper products such as tissues as they have wood particles which might scratch the gold's surface. Now I would never had thought of that.

There were several sites where people asked questions and got replies from anyone. Here are a few.

• Soak it in coke for 24 hours

• Soak for 10 minutes in a solution of ½ cup clean ammonia mixed with 1 cup warm water.

• Cover with Gin, Scotch or Vodka

• Mr. Clean – that's what jewellers usually use. Soak it over night in the morning take an old toothbrush and scrub it, or just use a cloth.

• Leave it overnight in a bowl of HP brown sauce

Then I decided to search on how to get rid of shoe polish. I eliminated anything to do
with fabric, but thought that shoe polish on cars or windows might be useful, so made notes on those.

Shoe polish

1. Try mixing equal parts of ammonia and warm water and scrub with a sponge.

2. Try rinsing your car with white vinegar, using a solution of 3 parts soft water to 1 part white vinegar, increasing the vinegar content as needed.

3. You could also try mayonnaise in a similar fashion.

4. Mix 1 Tablespoon cornstarch with 1/4 cup of white vinegar. Add the mixture to a spray bottle filled with a quart of warm water. 

5. Spray the mixture completely. Allow it to soak for 30 minutes.

Well summing it all up, I decided that most of the advice included washing up liquid or
toothpaste, both of which I already had. I'd buy some ammonia from the hardware shop and I'd check in the cupboards to see if Minnie had baking powder, cornstarch and vinegar and if not, buy that from the Coop. I'd like to try to vodka – but think maybe I'd spend a lot of money and drink most of the ingredient before it had a chance to do its work. But it wouldn't hurt to try with coke.

I thanked the librarian for her help and told her that I had made lots of useful
notes.

I got a bottle of ammonia from the hardware store and then hightailed it back to my
house to start the experiments.

I decided to start with the simplest first – and hope that that would do the trick. So
I took off my bracelet, put it into a medium sized ceramic bowl, and added very hot water and a generous dollop of washing up liquid. I stirred the mixture around and thought I'd leave it for an hour to work. I'd need soft cloths, and those might as well be from Minnie's
linen chest. I got a very ragged tea towel and also a wash cloth. I noticed that Minnie's toothbrush was still in the bathroom, so thought I might as well take that too. It wasn't going to have any other uses.

I decided to have an early lunch, and then if the washing up liquid hadn't worked, I'd
leave the bracelet in the ammonia solution while I stacked the living room furniture up again, and made the room safe for the second coat of paint.

There was no appreciable difference in the appearance of the bracelet. But I took
it out of the liquid and rubbed it hard on the soft cloth, and a bit of the shoe polish had softened and was coming off. I tried scrubbing into the cracks with the toothbrush, but hardly again affect.

Time to try recipe number 2. This called for ½ cup ammonia and 1 cup warm water. The ammonia stunk to high heaven, so it probably would be a pretty potent chemical reaction of some sort. But this was supposed to work on gold, so it shouldn't hurt the element itself. I put the bracelet in the concoction and set it out on the porch with the door between closed. I couldn't have borne that smell for much longer.

I put down the various sheets that I'd used as coverings for the furniture and carpet, and opened the new tin of paint, putting just the right amount into the paint tray and getting out the biggest roller again. I thought that I could get one half of the ceiling done before I went and looked again at my bracelet.

I was amazing how much whiter and cleaner the ceiling looked with the second coat. It
was so much better that I was pleased I'd decided to make the effort.

When I ran out of paint in the tray, I figured I'd left the bracelet cooking long
enough, and gingerly opened the door. The smell made my eyes water. But on first glance, the bracelet did look a lot cleaner, and you could see quite a lot of the gold colour showing through. The suggestion said to wipe the item gently – so I took it out and did
just that. Lots more of the brown colour came onto the cloth. In fact, I thought it would be soon necessary to get a new cloth, and this one was pretty well soaked and dirty. But the result was certainly of value. Another treatment or two and it would be perfect.  This time I would try the vinegar one instead. One of the solutions called for three parts
water to one part of vinegar. So I put in three cups of water, and one cup of vinegar. It stank too, but nowhere near as badly as the ammonia. It said that I could add more vinegar if necessary. I'd leave it like this while I did the walls and then add another cup of
vinegar if it hasn't had much effect.

Later on, checking my vinegar solution, the water had turned brown again, so there was obviously some reaction. I took it out and having got another clean tea towel, I wiped it clean. Now there were only a few bits of brown showing – mostly between the edges where there was a sort of plaiting effect. So I thought I'd try the toothbrush again. I dipped it in the vinegar solution, and worked it hard – and although some of the brown
disappeared, there was still quite a lot left.