We have been slowly chipping away at some small projects over here. You know the ones, the small niggling things that you’ve been intending to do for a long time but, for whatever reason you just keep putting them off. The cars in the garage and I don’t want to get out the power tools! Yeah those kind of little projects that would take you less then 5 minutes if the saw was just out. That’s the way I felt about getting these meat hooks up in the kitchen.

I’ve had these meat hooks for a few months now. When we broke up my parents home my sister and I each took a set. My dad back in the day was a chemical salesman and had accounts with the infamous meat packing plants here in NE. Someone from one of the plants offered them to my dad, and of course he knew my mom could put them to good use after a good cleaning. They hung on either side of the soffit over the peninsula in the kitchen.

I hung my set in my office and asked my sister if she was going to use them. Not having the ideal location to hang them, they had just been gathering dust in her garage. I went over and picked them up only to have them gather more dust in my garage!

Last week we brought the meat hooks up and I gave them a good cleaning and waxed them. These are wonderfully imperfect with very sharp hooks but, I love the scroll on the right side. I have come to the conclusion that dad must have cut them from one very long set because, the ones in my office has the scroll on the left. Their soffit was longer on one side than the other. They were a perfect fit.

This wasn’t a simple matter of screwing these into the wall. The heavy meat hooks required a mounting board because the brackets weren’t positioned to align with a stud. We also needed to create spacers to go behind the brackets to make everything flush. Not wanting the board to stand out, I painted it with flat paint the color of the wall Benjamin Moore Coastal Fog. I don’t have an island and no way to accommodate one so on the wall they went.

Over the years I have been collecting a few pieces of copper that has just been in storage. The round pan on the left I picked up at the Cabin Fever Antique Show for $8.00 and the small pot to its right at our ALO Thrift Shop for $8.00. The other pieces I have had for a long time. The long handle chestnut roaster on the far right, from an antique shop in Kansas.

The lantern is a wonderful piece of craftsmanship that I found at the Monticello Gift Shop several years ago. This reproduction lantern features three sides and a mirrored back, reflecting the candlelight beautifully. It is one of my favorites and I’ve never had the perfect place for it. The long handled pan came from Santa Fe New Mexico a lifetime ago. It took a lot of rearranging and fiddling to get it just right. I added a couple of bundles of hand dipped candles, and another pierced tin antique lantern that is very very old.

It made me so happy that my Lion Rampant Tavern Sign which is 18th Century could stay on this wall. I was worried that it would have to be displaced.

Love it or hate it, I would love to hear your comments. Could you live with all this stuff hanging in your kitchen? This was one of my favorite projects of 2023. I hope you enjoyed.

Thanks for stopping!

Shelley