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Historic Preservationist Wade Lege on Living in a Collection
69 Plays8 years ago
Preservationist and independent collector Wade Lege on restoring a Mississippi bayou home and filling it with Americana.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Host
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Too many people buy too much crap.
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I have to be around only a few beautiful things.
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Welcome back to another episode of Curious Objects and the Stories Behind Them, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Book Recommendation: 'Classical Principles for Modern Design'
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I'm your host, Ben Miller.
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And before diving in, I'd like to draw your attention to a new book you may find very interesting, Classical Principles for Modern Design.
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Speaker
It's by Thomas Jayne.
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a New York-based interior decorator whose work is much admired by the editors of the magazine Antiques.
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In this beautifully illustrated book, Thomas Jane demonstrates the lessons in simplicity and balance that he learned from Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr. So look for Classical Principles for Modern Design by Thomas Jane at your favorite bookstore or online retailer.
Meet Wade Leger and His Greek Revival House
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Music
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My guest today is Wade Leger, a private collector in Louisiana who was actually featured in an article in the magazine Antiques by Chris Waddington.
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Wade is a collector, but he's also a restorer, specifically of old Louisiana houses.
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And today we're talking about the one that he actually lives in, a 19th century Greek revival plantation house that's been burned, looted, neglected, and pulled across the earth by mule and by truck.
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So...
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Forget about theoretical knowledge.
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Close your art history textbooks.
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This is real life inside a real object.
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You'll want to visit themagazineantiques.com to see photos of the house and its contents and one intriguing, or I'd even say haunting, antique photograph of its former owners.
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Thanks so much to everyone who has taken the time to send feedback on the podcast and ideas for future interviews.
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I love hearing from you, so please send an email to podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
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Thanks also for leaving a rating or a review on iTunes.
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Now let's jump in with Wade Leger.
Exploring Wade's Historic House
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Wade Leger, thanks for joining me.
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You bet.
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Now, typically on this podcast, I'm talking with people who have a specific object, a piece of furniture, a piece of jewelry, a painting, some relatively small and well-defined piece.
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And in your case, we're talking about something a little bigger than that, which is to say your entire house.
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So for listeners who don't have a photograph in front of them, tell me a little bit about the architectural style of the house and its appearance.
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It has a very impressive colonnade across the front.
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Well, it's basically three rooms across the front.
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The house is 52 feet wide, approximately, and three equal-sized rooms, and then behind those three rooms are three additional rooms.
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And then you have basically a porch that spans the distance in front of the house,
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But then there's also a porch in the back of the house.
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And these porches all fall under the same hip roof.
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And there are no extensions.
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But on the rear porch, you have a room on each end of the porch or gallery.
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And those are called the cabinets.
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And they're just small rooms.
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Today, we use these cabinet rooms as bathrooms.
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Well, when the house was built, not to say they weren't used as a bathroom.
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There could have been, you know, chambers and commodes in there.
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But typically, there was a place away from the house for those uses.
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So these cabinet rooms, I believe, were just, you know, originally maybe storage rooms.
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this is a house that is actually not in its original location anymore is that correct not at all no
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the house was built closer to New Orleans and it was a river roadhouse, meaning it was built along the Mississippi River and by a family who made money forming sugarcane.
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There were some things that allowed this to happen out of my control and one of them was moving the house.
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That's an expensive endeavor and I was able to make a deal with someone in order to get this done.
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And, you know, there's some reasons out of my control that I actually did this project, but I don't really recommend it.
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Well, so tell me a little about this house.
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It's a Greek revival style.
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You know, it was originally raised...
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seven eight feet off the ground for reasons of flood control issues you know back in the nineteenth century there was no levy surround no flood control whatsoever folks stored dried goods and other things uh... and oftentimes
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There would just be wooden walls established between the piers, you know, the supports for the house itself.
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And that would be stored lock and key sometimes.
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Some houses were developed nicer than others, these basements.
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But they weren't in the ground, you know, they were above ground.
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Yeah, so in the 1930s, the Corps of Engineers decided to increase the size of the levees in that part of the world, and they began moving some of these houses.
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And I understand that just as many more were destroyed as were saved, but once they were moved—
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80 yards or more, they would not be raised seven or eight feet off the ground again.
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They would only be four feet or so on the ground.
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And that was the case with this house.
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And the original footprint of this house is actually underwater inside the levee.
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Really?
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Yep.
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So the whole farm, the whole plantation is no more?
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It's no more.
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Now, sugarcane is still farmed in that area and actually on the land where the house was.
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But, you know, all the glory of those days is long gone.
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Let's try to put this into a little bit of historical context.
Discoveries During Restoration
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So the house was constructed in the 1840s and presumably built by a slave-owning agricultural family.
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Yes.
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Do you know the family who built it?
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I have a photograph.
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dated 1899, I believe.
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And it is a photograph of the family members.
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And oddly enough, they're standing at the Mississippi and the Mississippi has floating ice in it.
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Evidently, there was a strong freeze that year.
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And these family members, it looks like...
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Some brothers and sisters or maybe a man and his wife.
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But certainly interesting.
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You know, there's some travel trunks in the photo.
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I don't know if they're waiting for a boat or paddle wheel, but certainly with these ice chunks, I can't see navigation at that period.
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They almost look stranded.
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But as I'm understanding, they're standing, you know, on there at the Mississippi on their property.
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That's the only little hint of evidence I have.
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Let me say this.
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The town that the house built in was a very prosperous river town in the 19th century, certainly before the war.
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And when I mean prosperous, I mean prosperous.
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Many other houses in the area, obviously not densely populated, but populated.
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And today, there's literally nothing there.
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It's almost shocking because there is nothing but river activity inside the levee.
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There is nothing on the outside.
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I mean, there are some chemical and petrol plants downriver and upriver from there, but there is no population.
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How times have changed.
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Yes.
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So what do you think likely happened to this house in the aftermath of the Civil War?
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Well, they did the best they could, you know, I mean, you know, that's that's it.
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You know, I mean, they continue to do what they could.
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And there is some history of the house at the turn of the century by people who lived in it.
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And there were some tales written and some stories written and some archives actually have seen some other photographs that date a little bit later into the early 1900s.
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But nothing that strikes anything interesting other than just ordinary life.
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The house is pretty cool in the fact that the original plaster was still on the walls in the house.
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Now this plaster was covered over with board and it was, I guess, sheetrock applied to these boards.
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So the house had a fire in 2007 and it almost burnt to the ground.
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And luckily, the fire department was able to put fire out.
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And at that time, the house had carpet.
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It had sheetrock.
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It had a sheetrock ceiling on the interior where all of this material had to be gutted.
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And in doing so, the owners I bought the house from had no idea this original plaster was underneath all of this.
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And it was in terrible condition.
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I mean, you can imagine these boards being nailed to plaster and being moved.
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When the Corps moved it, it was moved, could have been moved by animals, mules or, you know, horses.
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It's not always, they weren't always moved by machinery.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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And so there would have been a lot of jerking and a lot of, it wouldn't have been a smooth process.
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The color of the walls were pale yellow, a very pale green, and
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and a type of very robin's egg light blue color.
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And those were the three colors.
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And there were six rooms, and two rooms were blue, two rooms were green, and two rooms were yellow.
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And it was quite something to see.
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It mimicked Mother Nature is what it did.
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And the sun, the blue skies, and the green all around us.
00:10:28
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And how do you restore that?
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If you have a decision to make, you can live with it as it is.
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You can attempt to skim coat over it, which would essentially remove all the color.
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Or you could take it down and start from scratch.
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And I chose to take it down and start from scratch.
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It was so bad, it was unsightly.
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I see.
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Anyways, I was lucky to have enough people to help.
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And we took this broken plaster down.
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And I kept many samples, obviously.
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And my hope, I actually did one room in the yellow.
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And that room was published in the magazine magazine.
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And it came out great.
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You're able to buy the same product, milk paint today.
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And milk paint is a wonderful thing.
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And if a wall has fresh plaster on it, it readily absorbs this milk paint quite easily.
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And it's up to you how many coats you want to put on of this stuff.
00:11:23
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But you can mimic 19th century quite easily these days.
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And you've actually learned quite a bit about 19th century construction methods, right?
00:11:33
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Well, again, you know, trial and error.
00:11:36
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Sure, sure.
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But, you know, it's not everyone who would reconstruct plaster walls of an 1840s house.
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Oh, you know, suddenly, you know, I was in that reality is what it was.
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It wasn't anything else.
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I didn't think about what I was going to do necessarily.
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I just saw an opportunity to buy the house.
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And then when I was able to make the deal to move it, I already had the land.
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I thought, you know, here's my chance if I want it.
00:12:08
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Now, after the house was moved, when the levies were put into place, you say in the 1930s, do you know if the ownership of the house remained in the same family at that point?
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It changed hands.
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I don't know how many times, but the house, when it caught fire in 2007, it was being used as a rent house.
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And the people living there...
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had been there for 30 years, I understand.
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And it was in very nice condition before the fire because I've seen a photo of it.
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And unfortunately, after the fire, it was vandalized.
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And I know this for a fact that the neighbors, I asked the neighbors, you know, were there any mantles, you know, fireplace mantles?
00:12:53
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Yes, they were there.
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And then it seemed like every three months or so, the house sat empty, something would go missing.
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Mm-hmm.
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And then windows would become broken.
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And, you know, luckily, the people who bought the house after the fire removed all of the French doors and the interior doors.
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When I first looked at the house, I thought, well, man, there are no doors on this house.
00:13:18
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It's only boarded up by plywood.
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I'm just not interested.
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And the owner told me that they had removed the doors and that the doors were in storage on their property.
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And he invited me to come and take a look.
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And so, of course, that piqued my interest more.
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And when I saw the doors, I basically made up my mind to make a slightly better offer.
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And we were able to make the deal.
00:13:44
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They're the reason why I bought the house.
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And it's not just because of the doors, but the doors are incredibly beautiful.
00:13:52
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For instance, the glazed doors, what I call French doors, the double doors, they have a double panel, which is unusual.
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So there's a large panel at the bottom, and then above that is a more narrow panel.
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And it's just a nice, nice touch.
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And then the interior doors, they're basically single doors.
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no glass, solid wood, and the doors are incredibly heavy.
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You know, when the house was built, these large trees, the center of these large trees were kept for door making.
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And that, the reason being was the heart of a tree was the tightest grain, and that grain would not warp.
00:14:35
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So you could make a door and it would remain plumb as a door, as long as you used the heart of a tree.
00:14:43
Speaker
That's fascinating.
00:14:44
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I didn't realize that.
Wade Leger's Passion for History and Antiques
00:14:45
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And I would imagine that, in part because of that reason, doors would be very appealing objects for vandals to steal and have reclaimed architectural elements.
00:14:54
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That and the vandals are the things that always get, you know, stolen.
00:15:00
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Well, and I suppose sometimes they're stolen and other times the owners just decide to cannibalize the house.
00:15:07
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That's possible.
00:15:08
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I mean, it's like when you go to New Orleans and
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You go around New Orleans and you see great things, but then you go to the French Quarter and then you start to see the early doors in the French Quarter and all, and it just harkens back to another time, I guess.
00:15:25
Speaker
Let me change gears for a second and ask a little bit about your background and how you got interested in this kind of thing.
00:15:31
Speaker
You were born and raised in Louisiana, correct?
00:15:34
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Yeah.
00:15:34
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Were you surrounded by antiques as a kid?
00:15:36
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Is that something your parents were into?
00:15:39
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Not so much.
00:15:41
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My mother did have a shop with her sister.
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And for this, it was basically retail, new things.
00:15:47
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But we would take a trip to Dallas to go to this market.
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And inside of this market, they did have old shops.
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And I remember being blown away by the history of some of these things I was seeing.
00:16:00
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And then also, I guess I had my dad's sister was in another part of the world in the Mideast, in the Philippines and in England.
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Her husband was a drill instructor for an oil company in
00:16:13
Speaker
They would send stamps and coins to me.
00:16:18
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And I was fascinated by what some of these things, what I was looking at.
00:16:24
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So I guess I would grab an encyclopedia and I guess try to figure out where, what is it like, where these things are coming from.
00:16:32
Speaker
I could always daydream.
00:16:33
Speaker
When there was nothing else to do, I would always daydream about some aspect of antiquity.
00:16:38
Speaker
And I didn't have any experience whatsoever with antiquity.
00:16:41
Speaker
an old house, but I did like them.
00:16:44
Speaker
I remember taking quite a few tours of early houses.
00:16:47
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Matter of fact, one thing comes to mind, we would take a boat to an area called New Roads, which is north of Baton Rouge, and there there's an old Mississippi River outlet, and it's no longer part of the Mississippi, and actually the water's very clear there, but there's a lot of skiing and there's a lot of houses there, but on one side of it, this waterway is filled lined with plantations.
00:17:10
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I was always very keen to take the truck.
00:17:13
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I guess I just got my driver's license.
00:17:15
Speaker
And I was too embarrassed to tell my dad that I was going to make up a story like I need to go to the store or something.
00:17:22
Speaker
And I would go because my folks, they wouldn't, I don't think, spend too much time driving around looking at old houses.
00:17:29
Speaker
But I sure fancied it.
00:17:31
Speaker
I've owned a lot of things that I have sold.
00:17:34
Speaker
My first house, I have a small historic Acadian house that is on the property, and that was in Lafayette near the Interstate 10 highway system, and it was abandoned, and they were going to tear it down, and by word of mouth, I found out about it.
00:17:51
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And I was able to buy it.
00:17:53
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It took me a couple of years to finally move it.
00:17:57
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Finally got the little house and I guess moved in it in 2007, something around that year.
00:18:04
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I've been living in that little house up until about a year ago now.
00:18:08
Speaker
So I, you know, that house, I was able to figure out a little bit more, you know, how plaster might work.
00:18:18
Speaker
And then the more modern things like plumbing and electrical and, you know, you need all those things these days.
00:18:23
Speaker
Certainly I do.
00:18:25
Speaker
But and there are some other buildings here on the property.
00:18:28
Speaker
I have a couple of outbuildings that I rescued.
00:18:31
Speaker
And there's another single room house that appears to have been a larger part of a larger house, but that I rescued.
00:18:40
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And, you know, I'm not looking to rescue any more buildings for this property at all.
00:18:48
Speaker
You pay your quota.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:18:51
Speaker
Oh, God, yes.
00:19:01
Speaker
Interested in the ins and outs of doors, the rational handling of rooms in general, color, the historical tradition?
00:19:10
Speaker
These are all chapter headings in interior designer Thomas Jane's new book, Classical Principles for Modern Design, from Monticelli Press.
00:19:18
Speaker
Jane advocates a middle road between innovation and tradition, reminding us that comfort in a home is paramount, and that good design is as often a product of sensitivity to the past as it is of inklings of the future.
00:19:31
Speaker
Find Classical Principles of Modern Design at a bookstore near you or at MonticelliPress.com.
00:19:41
Speaker
And with that, let's get back to Wade Leger.
00:19:44
Speaker
Well, now let's talk a bit about the contents of the house because you've filled this house with some very interesting antique objects.
Trends in the Antiques Market
00:19:52
Speaker
Great antiques are cheap these days.
00:19:53
Speaker
At least they are at the auctions I'm browsing.
00:19:57
Speaker
Why that is, I think just things are out of style.
00:20:01
Speaker
Great American antiques are just, there are a lot of them out there these days coming up to sell.
00:20:10
Speaker
And if you're patient,
00:20:12
Speaker
You can nab a very nice piece that will never go out of style.
00:20:19
Speaker
A lot of things were built.
00:20:20
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The day they were built, they were just basically crap, junk.
00:20:25
Speaker
You want to try to stay away from those things, I believe.
00:20:29
Speaker
in terms of the pieces that you've been collecting for the house, are you looking for pieces that are consistent with the period of the house or pieces that have regional connections?
00:20:40
Speaker
Or is this more about lifestyle and just finding nice and beautiful things to live with?
00:20:47
Speaker
Basically all three.
00:20:49
Speaker
I have been collecting regional material for 20 years plus.
00:20:54
Speaker
Luckily in South Louisiana there's an abundance of
00:20:59
Speaker
regional antiques material culture left in the form of, you know, furniture, in the form of textiles, in the form of buildings and outbuildings, in the form of more primitive items like, you know, objects used for cooking.
00:21:18
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of Louisiana-related antiques out there that, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, before we had, you know, the
00:21:28
Speaker
internet and smartphones.
00:21:31
Speaker
The chase was kind of fun.
00:21:32
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You could talk to some people and then someone would say, well, you know, in this barn, on this person's property, I remember seeing such and such.
00:21:40
Speaker
It was always fun.
00:21:42
Speaker
You could always find some pretty cool stuff.
00:21:44
Speaker
There are some collections out there down here that are pretty amazing.
00:21:50
Speaker
I like the New York
00:21:52
Speaker
Furniture makers and things I like I like Baltimore as well Boston as well So I cover the gamut really so you you've got pieces from all across the the eastern seaboard then yeah pretty much Yeah, absolutely and I suppose frankly the original owners of the house might well have been buying furniture from from New York just as as they might have been buying furniture from England and
00:22:17
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:22:18
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I mean, you had retailers in New Orleans selling not only New Orleans made things, but also retailing for furniture from other parts of the East Coast.
00:22:29
Speaker
The Mid-Atlantic states, certainly.
00:22:32
Speaker
Just, you know, the best, some of the best purveyors of antiques and furniture and whatnot are from that part of the eastern seaboard.
00:22:43
Speaker
So, you know, it's not hard if you wait and wait and you can find, you know, these, there are some great, like Mississippi, for instance, there are some great Eastern Seaboard pieces coming out of these houses in Mississippi.
00:22:57
Speaker
And, you know, what's funny is they have been in these same houses since they were purchased in, you know, the first half of the 19th century.
00:23:05
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, it really is.
00:23:08
Speaker
And their climate is,
00:23:10
Speaker
And once you get going up a state or so, it's just less humid.
00:23:16
Speaker
And so the preservation of material is better than it is, say, in New Orleans with all the humidity.
00:23:25
Speaker
So let's go back for a second.
00:23:26
Speaker
I want to ask you to talk a little bit more about the sources of these objects, because you're not just buying at auction houses.
00:23:32
Speaker
You are buying at auction houses.
00:23:34
Speaker
But it sounds like there are other ways that you've come across interesting pieces.
00:23:38
Speaker
It's kind of word of mouth.
00:23:40
Speaker
I have a friend in California who pays attention to estate sales around Los Angeles.
00:23:46
Speaker
I have a friend an hour outside of Pittsburgh who does some traveling in that part of the world.
00:23:53
Speaker
He's from here originally.
00:23:56
Speaker
Well, I got to know them all here.
00:23:58
Speaker
You know, there's an auction house in New Hampshire.
00:24:02
Speaker
And then there are a couple all the way down that I pay attention to.
00:24:07
Speaker
And that, you know, there's always something.
00:24:09
Speaker
But there are some great auction houses in New Orleans.
00:24:12
Speaker
So there's always something coming up.
00:24:14
Speaker
There's a good one in Mississippi.
00:24:15
Speaker
There's a there's been some great auctions recently that have come out of Alabama.
00:24:20
Speaker
Christie's had an amazing auction recently of contents of a house in Alabama.
00:24:26
Speaker
I mean, just amazing.
00:24:28
Speaker
Do you have a particular favorite piece in your house right now that you'd like to tell listeners about?
Wade's Favorite Antique Piece
00:24:35
Speaker
There was a cherry and cypress plantation desk that is Greek revival in style.
00:24:42
Speaker
I would guess 1830s.
00:24:44
Speaker
It has an amphitheater interior, which just means it's four tiered or four leveled with drawers on the first two levels.
00:24:54
Speaker
and then basically arched openings, the shelving, they're finished with scalloped edges in cherry.
00:25:02
Speaker
So in other words, most of the shelf is cypress, but then the very front of it is the scalloped edge decorated piece in cherry.
00:25:10
Speaker
And it came up for auction in Mississippi of all places.
00:25:13
Speaker
And I feel very fortunate to have gotten it.
00:25:16
Speaker
That has become a favorite piece of mind simply because we use it every day.
00:25:21
Speaker
There's nothing to make you fall in love with a piece like putting it to good use.
00:25:25
Speaker
I know.
00:25:25
Speaker
It's so compartmentalized that it stores last week's stuff, last month's stuff, and last year's stuff.
00:25:33
Speaker
So I know where last year's things are.
00:25:36
Speaker
I know where the current things are.
00:25:38
Speaker
I'm just tickled pink to have it.
00:25:40
Speaker
I'll be honest with you.
00:25:41
Speaker
It's, you know, it's just a very fine thing.
00:25:43
Speaker
And what's funny is the man who delivered it to me, he said, uh,
00:25:49
Speaker
Did you see this thing?
00:25:50
Speaker
I said, well, is it nice?
00:25:51
Speaker
He said, oh, it's nice.
00:25:53
Speaker
He said, normally you find a signature on pieces like this.
00:25:57
Speaker
But he said, loading it up, I looked.
00:25:59
Speaker
He said, I didn't see a signature.
00:26:02
Speaker
Now, this man handles a lot of stuff.
00:26:04
Speaker
Him to talk nicely about it.
00:26:06
Speaker
I couldn't wait to finally open it.
00:26:08
Speaker
He's telling me all this.
00:26:09
Speaker
And, you know, this is the first time I'm seeing it because I only bought it online, you know.
00:26:15
Speaker
That was a pleasant surprise.
00:26:17
Speaker
Very much.
00:26:17
Speaker
It exceeded my expectations.
Living in a Historic House
00:26:20
Speaker
And I have to say, I think that speaking of this notion that using something can make you love it more, I'm sure you could say exactly the same thing about your house.
00:26:28
Speaker
And one of the interesting things to me about the process of restoring a house to live in is it's very different from the process of restoring a house to make it into a museum, for example, where people will come in and have the opportunity to see this wonderful historical relic, but nobody's going to have the chance to experience what it was like
00:26:48
Speaker
really to live in it and to see the purpose that it was made for.
00:26:52
Speaker
But you, day in and day out, have that experience.
00:26:55
Speaker
You, as you say, you've got a modern kitchen and certain modern conveniences, but you're also in a very real sense surrounded by the vestiges of this almost 200-year-old culture.
00:27:08
Speaker
Tell me a bit about, do you feel closeness?
00:27:10
Speaker
Do you feel sometimes that you're living in a time machine?
00:27:14
Speaker
Do you imagine the families that have come before you?
00:27:16
Speaker
What's the daily experience like of living in a house with that kind of a history?
00:27:23
Speaker
I suppose, I guess I do feel privileged in some aspects, but again, the restoration of it was so difficult and took so long and basically, you know, bankrupted me for, you know, four years.
00:27:38
Speaker
that I feel like I did put some, you know, effort into its history.
00:27:44
Speaker
Uh, I don't know.
00:27:46
Speaker
I don't think about those terms too much.
00:27:48
Speaker
I mean, it's just really shadow lines at the end of the day.
00:27:53
Speaker
And, you know, when I, what I mean by shadow lines is it's just the, uh, detail and molding sequence, I guess, in parts of the house that you only see in a certain time in the 19th century.
00:28:07
Speaker
And,
00:28:09
Speaker
You know, living in an old house is interesting.
00:28:13
Speaker
I love the floor plan of the house, and that's something I wanted to mention.
00:28:17
Speaker
That was one of my favorite—that was my favorite thing about the house when I saw it for the first time was the floor plan.
00:28:24
Speaker
And it just simply allowed for two separate apartments on both ends of the house.
00:28:31
Speaker
I mean, you know, one end of the house mimics exactly the other end.
00:28:36
Speaker
The doors are in the same place.
00:28:37
Speaker
The rooms are the same size.
00:28:38
Speaker
There are no surprises, no weird turns.
00:28:40
Speaker
There are no hallways.
00:28:43
Speaker
And I thought, well, you know, this is pretty cool.
00:28:46
Speaker
I mean, I don't you know, I had a girlfriend at the time that we had been together for many years.
00:28:51
Speaker
And I certainly hope did not see that changing.
00:28:56
Speaker
Matter of fact, we were in the house together today.
00:28:57
Speaker
She's now my fiance, but she has her side and I have mine.
00:29:03
Speaker
And of course, we do share the same side together often.
00:29:09
Speaker
However, when she needs to, she's an attorney, when she needs to sit down and do her work, or if for whatever reason I'm doing something on my side.
00:29:20
Speaker
So it allows for some freedom for us, some space and some elbow room.
00:29:25
Speaker
I guess Ben Franklin is right about good fences making good neighbors, huh?
00:29:30
Speaker
Well, and you know, you want a nice fence.
00:29:35
Speaker
Let me move in the direction of wrapping up here.
00:29:38
Speaker
I want to ask you a couple of questions that I ask all of my guests.
Advice for Collectors and Restorers
00:29:42
Speaker
The first one is, what is a mistake that you see other collectors or people who are involved in this kind of restoration area?
00:29:52
Speaker
What's one mistake that you see them making that you would caution them against?
00:29:58
Speaker
I would say, you know, it's good to collect and to have an old building you love.
00:30:05
Speaker
You want to make the house for yourself to live in.
00:30:10
Speaker
I would caution against not making it as museum as you might have intended to or I guess authentic as you might have intended to.
00:30:21
Speaker
Because, you know, you want things to work, you want to live in it, and you need it.
00:30:25
Speaker
You may want to multi-use the building.
00:30:28
Speaker
In other words, you may want to event rental the building.
00:30:31
Speaker
Or you may have some other idea later down the road that you don't see coming, and you may want to allow yourself some room to do that.
00:30:40
Speaker
As far as collecting, too many people buy too much crap.
00:30:44
Speaker
And it's true.
00:30:46
Speaker
And too many people hoard things.
00:30:50
Speaker
Too many collectors have too many things.
00:30:53
Speaker
I have to be around only a few beautiful things.
00:30:58
Speaker
And I guess that's different in everyone's mind and taste.
00:31:03
Speaker
But I do see a lot of junk amongst a lot of people's beauty.
00:31:10
Speaker
Or, you know, you'll see some beautiful things and then a lot of junk.
00:31:13
Speaker
And, you know, you got to wonder, you know, I mean,
00:31:16
Speaker
So collecting is, you know, I'm a poor man's, you know, classical dealer or buyer.
00:31:24
Speaker
You know, this is the poor version of the classics over here.
00:31:27
Speaker
I did not have a great budget to collect.
00:31:30
Speaker
And I'm very fortunate these days that how affordable, great American pieces have become.
00:31:39
Speaker
Fifteen years ago, it was very different.
00:31:43
Speaker
You know, things were,
00:31:45
Speaker
had strong value and great things had even stronger value and the only thing that has maintained its value is the art.
00:31:59
Speaker
Actually the art has gone up.
00:32:01
Speaker
Regional art has skyrocketed and art in particular has not fallen.
00:32:07
Speaker
Furniture
00:32:08
Speaker
And other objects of art, decorative arts, people are, I mean, candlesticks don't even sell anymore.
00:32:16
Speaker
I don't care how nice, how decorated the furniture.
00:32:22
Speaker
You know, it is shocking that many things European will find buyers at auction with what I consider expensive.
00:32:32
Speaker
kind of eye-opening prices.
00:32:34
Speaker
And however, the much more refined, much more elegant, much more beautiful American piece is just sitting there with no interest.
00:32:45
Speaker
Is there any other advice that you would give to a listener who, for example, is listening to you right now and thinking maybe he or she wants to put some equity into a house and restore it and live in a beautiful historic home?
Challenges in Restoring Historic Homes
00:33:00
Speaker
What advice would you give to someone who's thinking about just starting out in that process?
00:33:06
Speaker
Consider the elements, the weather, Mother Nature, for one.
00:33:10
Speaker
And consider the fact that it's not going to go as planned.
00:33:13
Speaker
Consider your budget.
00:33:15
Speaker
And consider the time it takes on your lifestyle.
00:33:23
Speaker
In other words, this sweat equity you're talking about, well, you need time to revamp and revive yourself from this sweat equity.
00:33:31
Speaker
Well, you're normally so broke, you can't even take a vacation.
00:33:34
Speaker
And you're normally so tired, you don't even want to.
00:33:36
Speaker
So, you know, depending on whether you have to move the house and
00:33:42
Speaker
Or, you know, if it's just a mild restoration, that's fine.
00:33:46
Speaker
But old buildings, you know, are great.
00:33:51
Speaker
I would just say, you know, do it.
00:33:53
Speaker
You know, you have to have a come to Jesus moment about do I really want to get involved with this or not?
00:34:03
Speaker
I guess that, you know, of course, price.
00:34:05
Speaker
If you can get involved in something on the cheap and then by all means, it's probably worth it.
00:34:09
Speaker
But if it's going to be a struggle and it's going to be a struggle for a little while and that little while turns into a little bit longer because of things out of your control, it gets to be a thorn in your side.
00:34:24
Speaker
And, you know, I can remember many times people saying, well, you know, you don't come to New Orleans anymore.
00:34:31
Speaker
I'm like, listen, I got a list of reasons why you don't see me anymore.
00:34:34
Speaker
The top of this is money.
00:34:35
Speaker
The next thing is I'm too tired.
00:34:37
Speaker
And, you know, the third thing is, is, you know, I got to start back up on this in the next day or two, and I'll be driving back to New Orleans.
00:34:44
Speaker
I'm not about to, it's just too much.
00:34:48
Speaker
I know that there are many beautiful, many beautiful properties that need restoration in many parts of the United States.
00:34:55
Speaker
And, you know, I would tell anyone to certainly consider that.
00:34:59
Speaker
But tools break, for instance.
00:35:03
Speaker
And then suddenly you're sitting there.
00:35:06
Speaker
you're making no progress whatsoever and this dream starts to seem like a bit of a waste of time maybe.
00:35:16
Speaker
That's the reality of it.
00:35:18
Speaker
You know, it's, you know, oh, you look and you have rose-colored glasses.
00:35:23
Speaker
Well, that may be true, but the reality is you have to have a lot of patience if you embark on something that is maybe more than you can handle.
00:35:36
Speaker
I've heard a pretty amazing stories of people doing just that, buying into more that they could handle.
00:35:44
Speaker
Often, you know, building will just stay tarped for years because they can't even get the, you know, the roof can't even come together.
00:35:51
Speaker
And that for whatever reason, the surprise in their life and injury of this, that and the other.
00:35:57
Speaker
If you aren't a good cook, get something good to eat, you know,
00:36:10
Speaker
Well, there you
Conclusion and Future Content Teaser
00:36:11
Speaker
have it.
00:36:11
Speaker
Hard to argue with that.
00:36:13
Speaker
That's all for this episode.
00:36:14
Speaker
Thanks to my guest, Wade Leger.
00:36:16
Speaker
Don't forget to check out the photos on themagazineantiques.com and send me your thoughts and suggestions at podcast at themagazineantiques.com.
00:36:26
Speaker
Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss future episodes.
00:36:28
Speaker
Next up, we're going to have a really exciting special two-part episode straight from the Winter Antiques Show here in New York City, where I'll be talking with a host of dealers about objects of all stripes.
00:36:38
Speaker
You won't want to miss it.
00:36:39
Speaker
In the meantime, if you're a lover of great design from any era, I invite you to check out the Magazine Antique's sister publication, Modern Magazine.
00:36:47
Speaker
Modern provides a lively, yet discerning take on the world of late 20th century and contemporary design and decorative arts, offering information and inspiration to collectors and decorators alike.
00:36:57
Speaker
Take a look and subscribe at modernmag.com.
00:37:00
Speaker
Curious Objects is a podcast from the magazine Antiques.
00:37:04
Speaker
Our editor is Sammy Delati.
00:37:05
Speaker
Music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:37:07
Speaker
And I'm your host, Ben Miller.
00:37:09
Speaker
Thanks for listening.