At 1:12am on August 23rd we were woken by a HUGE crash! Living in earthquake country, both hubby and paused to see if the house was shaking before investigating the source of this sound. No earthquake... just this...
Both of the pictures are bad, they are actually a photo grab from a video #2 son was taking. One of the pegs in our top shelf gave way and all of the Fiesta came crashing down. The picture below is what was up on the shelf.
I am heartbroken, I probably lost 40 pieces of Fiesta, chop plates, wide rim pasta bowls, wide rim soup bowls, bread and butter plates and assorted other items. The sad part is we have been replacing the plastic shelf pegs with metal ones, unfortunately we didn't do that shelf yet.
The picture on the left is the type of peg that gave way. It is plastic and was probably installed with the cabinets, which are 20+ years old. The metal peg on the right is the ones we've using to replace the plastic ones.
I belong to a couple Fiesta groups on Facebook, when I posted the pictures, the outpouring of sympathy was amazing! One gentleman posted pictures of how he has reinforced his cabinets. As I don't trust the metal pegs not to bend, I will also be adding structural support in each of the corners of the cabinet, similar to below (from the FB group.) #2 son and I went to Home Depot and bought wood to make supports.
Several generous people, including friend, Kissy, offered to give me pieces as replacements. What a wonderful community! And on the upside, I've wanted to do Fiesta mosaics for a while, now I don't have any excuses!
A couple of things I do to make sure I know what to replace, first, I have an inventory of all of all my dishes/glassware, color and pieces. Second, every year I walk around and take pictures, I open cabinets, drawers... etc. Since we live in earthquake country and fire areas, I have it for insurance purposes. My inventory is a spreadsheet on Google drive and I am fanatical about keeping it up to date -- it is the project manager in me! I am using my spreadsheet to determine what was lost and what survived.
Coincidentally, friend Kissy and my Bestie were planning a girls trip to the annual Fiesta tent sale in October. I want to think about what I want to replace and what color. The pieces I lost have been collected over 30 years, many of the colors retired (Lilac and Persimmon.) Fiesta does not make wide rim soup bowls any more or bread and butter plates...
As we do live in earthquake country, I am rethinking how my dishes and glassware are stored. Much of it is in china keeper boxes, but items I use a lot are on shelves and one good shake... I am using this three day weekend to move items around.
Lessons learned:
Fiesta dishes and dishes in general are heavy, reinforce your shelves and cabinets
Don't store items on the edge of shelves
Inventory and take pictures
I am sad, but look forward strategizing the replacements and I love to organize, so re-organizing my dishes!!
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