Architectural salvage is a booming genre in the antique world. Architectural salvage is anything that is found in an old building or home from old wood floors to doorknobs. If an old building is slated to be demolished, a salvage company goes in and removes as much or as little as they can. Yes, there is a fee and a strict timeline.

Salvaging what is headed for the dump is the true definition of repurposing and recycling. Years ago near my house a warehouse club was being built and they bought three blocks of homes all were slated to be bulldozed. When we learned that the dossers were moving in, we loaded the truck with tools and went from house to house procuring a variety of items. I have several boxes of glass and stone doorknobs, a fireplace surround, enough bricks to build a walkway in the backyard, an exterior door with 40 panes of glass, several nice old wall sconces, and several other items. Needless to say we were not the only people out salvaging. One lady was digging up flowers and shrubs. My husband, ever the rule follower, sat in the truck until I mentioned the bricks.

As someone who has spent the majority of my life with antiques I often wonder about the life different pieces have lived, especially furniture. Who owned this item? What kind of house was it in? My family teases me about painted portraits I often buy. This brings up the question why is this portrait being sold.

The above is the lead-in to a huge win for the life of a castle. Sauer Castle at 935 Shawnee Rd in Kansas City, KS, is finally being brought back to life! I first encountered the beautiful home in the mid-1980s when an in-law got married up in the belvedere of the house. While the family was scattered about on the front lawn, heads thrown back watching the ceremony, I was scampering all over the inside. The building was still in good condition back then. The castle is near the home of one of my daughters, so every now and then I would drive by to check on it. Sadly, I saw the destruction and decay in real time.

Besides the age of 150 years, the style of Sauer Castle is beyond words. The Victorian/Edwardian era Queen Anne-style “Painted Lady” homes are stunning with the gingerbread trim and rounded corner towers. The pre-Civil War Antebellum homes based on the Greek Revival style are magnificent and their test of time adds to the allure. These are also referred to as plantation homes with the largest concentration being in Louisiana. Missouri has a little cluster of them in Weston. Yet my preference is for Italianate style buildings and that is what Sauer Castle is.
In my opinion, the Italianate style is one in which the best of all construction components have been put in to one style. The style is drawn from the Italian Renaissance period that was popular abroad and was intended to mimic the look of Italian cottages and villas. It became popular in America in the 1840s to 1890s.

Anton Sauer was born in Germany in 1823. He married and had a wife, but sadly she passed. In 1858 Anton moved to New York to be with his mother and sisters. His tuberculosis was worsening, so in 1868 he made the move to Kansas City. Sauer wanted to build a grand home on the highest spot in the area; he found such a spot on Shawnee Road on a bluff overlooking the Kansas River. The Shawnee Indian Trail, which was part of the Santa Fe Trail, passed right beside his home. Building began in 1871. It wasn’t long before he met and married a much younger widow, Mary (Maria) Einhellig Messerschmidt. Mary had two daughters. In 1872 the house was complete and fully furnished with furniture brought over from Europe. Anton and Mary went on to have five daughters. The property had a pool, a wonderful fountain in the front and several outbuildings, a wine cellar, bakery, and smoke house. I believe the remnants of a few are still somewhat standing.

Happy September to all of our antique, vintage, and collectible lovers.

If you have been following my column the past few months, thank you. You may have figured out by now that I was deeply involved in putting together and holding a living estate sale and moving sale at my parent’s house, My father is 91 years old and it was time to move him out of the four-story mega house; the decision was made to move him in with my oldest daughter and her ranch-style house.

Many of you may be faced with the same or similar situation in the future, and I would like to offer some unsolicited advice on what I learned throughout the process. Another job I had to do was to prepare the house to be sold. My mom passed more than 14 years ago, I certainly wish that I had been deep cleaning and maintenance in several areas of the house. That would have prevented the month-long ordeal I encountered after preparing for and holding the sale.

In the majority of cities and towns throughout the country, you will find estate sale companies. They have a crew that comes in, pulls everything out, cleans what needs cleaning, prices, stages the items, and conducts the sale. They do all of the work for around 35% of the final take. What I learned when my father decided to move is that the estate sale business has changed tremendously in my area over the years. From the few people who returned my phone call, I learned that I would have to get everything out and clean the items, the percentage of the final sale price is 45% to 55%, we would need to provide people to watch over the shoppers on each floor, and we had to guarantee that they would pocket $5,000. Shut the front door. The last requirement of insuring a $5,000 pay day was a bit more than we were willing to accept. My oldest daughter and I decided to do it on our own.
Conducting a living estate sale / moving sale is something anyone can do, I suggest that you recruit some help. My oldest daughter helped tremendously in the first stage. She took my father, sat him down in a chair with two boxes, one of items he wanted to take with him when he moved and another for items he wanted to go to family members. When they got to the office and the five-drawer file cabinet I had asked them to keep all receipts for major household purchases such as the hot water heater, swimming pool liner, basically anything that would be needed by the new homeowner. All of the other paperwork was shredded. This process was very time consuming because it is a four-story, four-bedroom house.

• The purging of paperwork and handling of major purchase receipts can be streamlined if the homeowner or family member performs these tasks annually. Receipts can be placed in a file folder or large envelope at the time of purchase.
Once the purging phase has ended it is time for family members and friends to remove items that the homeowner designated in the will and any last-minute gifts. I highly suggest that the executor of the will be notified of all last-minute gifts.as a precautionary measure. When the will comes into play, no one wants a squabble over a piece of furniture that is unaccounted for.

Each of you can relate to the next step: cleaning. Again, you go room by room with a duster, all-purpose cleaner, cloth, broom, mop, and price tags. Wipe down everything, please, we all know how off- putting it is to pickup something that is sticky or really dusty. Price each item. If you are unsure of a price take a picture of the item and look on Google Lens to get a rough idea. If you have a number of expensive items, you might want to have an appraiser look at them. You want to move expensive items to the area where the cashier will be. Sweep, mop, and on to the next room.

• Before you setup the display tables please remove all area rugs as they are a fall hazard.
You need to give some thought to the types of payment you will take. Back in the good old days, cash was king; in 2024 Venmo, Apple Pay, and the like are the way to go. Based on my daughters’ experience we signed up with Square. They will send you a small card swiper to be plugged into a smart phone. They do take a percentage of each sale, so please be sure to read the information and even compare with other similar services. This also tends to increase the dollar amount that people spend.

Happy July, everyone. By now all of you gardeners and farmers should be enjoying the fruits of your labor. Our peppers are setting on nicely yet everything else, especially the tomatoes are just teasing us. There seems to be more garage sales this summer than last. I always stop but am more selective in what I purchase. A few weeks ago when driving through a neighborhood, I picked a 1950s pink formica top table off of the curb. It has a bit of rust on the chrome legs, which is an easy fix. Score!

Q: I purchased this beautiful cup, saucer, and spoon set by Franz Co. at an auction. I couldn’t pass it up and paid only $15 for it. The dimensions are 6.25 in. L x 5 in. W x 3 in. H. Even if I overpaid for it, I am still happy with my purchase. I would love to find other pieces. Thank you for any information you can give me.

A: Your precious set is from the Franz Wildlife Wonders Series. There are some wonderful and very intricate pieces in this series. Franz Collection is a Taiwanese porcelain brand, founded in 2001 by Franz Chen (Chen Li-Heng). With a degree in German, one of his professors gave the founder a German name, “Franz.” The founder decided to use his German name for the name of his company. The products of this company include porcelain tableware, home decor, art, and jewelry. Franz Collection Inc. is headquartered in Taipei, with the production and decorating in China. Decades of experience are required to understand and successfully employ the combination of mixing, firing, casting and coloring techniques used by Franz. China has the best clay for creating such delicate and beautiful wares. The backstamp shows a blue seagull, the company name, and two lozenges with Asian text.

The company has won several prestigious awards for the quality and design of their products. The backstamp tells us this is not an old piece of porcelain, but nonetheless Franz Collection wares are very desirable and larger pieces such as teapots reflect how highly sought after Franz creations are. The company is still in operation.

The current resale value for your cup, saucer, and spoon in the ladybug and daisy pattern is $150. Not bad at all for a $15 investment.

Many of you have already experienced the task of deciding what to do with the contents of the family home or at least the home in which your parents lived for many decades. Some of you have yet to find yourself sitting in the home office staring into the abyss of a closet overflowing with miscellany of operating two business out of the home, three printers, a scanner, Costco-sized bundles of ledger books, and stacks of items so deep that you can’t see the back wall.

My father is 91 and still living in the house they purchased when we moved to Kansas in 1985. It has four levels, four bedrooms each with extra large closets, eight additional closets, and a darkroom in the basement which has been used for storage. I have learned that closets are capable of hiding all types of goodies that should have been donated decades ago. He is wanting to move out of the big house and will be moving in with me or my oldest daughter hopefully this summer.

Mom was an antique collector and dealer. Due to daddy’s job we had the privilege of living or visiting locations around the world, and it was not unusual for mom to have a wood crate or large boxes of purchases shipped back to the U.S. It was a huge thrill when the transport truck would deliver a large wood crate. They had to place it in the front yard where we would dismantle the crate, toss excelsior all over the yard until the beautiful items inside were revealed. Think about the movie “A Christmas Story” when the leg lamp was delivered, that was us.

Needless to say, though the house is neat and tidy, it is filled to capacity with stuff. One helpful and important thing that mama did over the years was place little notes with items she felt that we needed to know the provenance or history. For instance, she has a child’s roll top desk and chair. One day while dusting I came across one such note. It told the story about seeing the pieces in a shop window and how she stopped to look at them. My granny noticed mom’s interest and months later on her birthday she presented the desk and chair to my mama. The chair is a child’s Windsor back chair. This poses a big quandary for myself and my daughters as none of us really have the space to bring the desk and chair home, but it apparently had significant meaning for my mama. Do we keep it or sell it?

Since my daddy could use the money, we have decided to sell these two pieces. The desk should sell for $250 and the chair around $100.

My family doesn’t have many heirloom pieces but the few that we do have will come to my house or the home of my oldest. We both have glassed-in cabinets in which to place them. They have a 1950s or 1960s Brunswick three-piece slate top pool table with cushion bumpers. It will include all accessories, The two family members who want it haven’t thought things through. One is living in my basement and the other in an apartment in Chicago. This has a resale value of around $3,000 but my price is half of that and I drew the short straw on who is going to inform these two that a full sized pool table just isn’t going to work with their living space.