The listing said $65, but you know I did the old “how about sixty, we have cash?!” thing when we got there and looked it over… and… sold! It definitely appeared to be purchased but never used (it still had some of the white sticky peel-off stuff on the underside that new hoods have) – although it didn’t look like it had been kept completely protected while it was being stored (there are some scratches on the curved hood part). But those scratches are most likely the reason we got it for such a deal (in mint condition it could have been sold for at least $200). And since we’ll be building a wood hood box around it, those scratches won’t matter at all. We actually love them for allowing us to afford such a fancy pants hood. Wait, you’re stuck on that part about the wood hood box thing, aren’t you? Allow me to provide a visual (from here). Except this one is a lot wider than ours since our stove isn’t a double wide guy like this:

There’s also this one (from here). Except ours will most likely be white so that penny-tile-to-the-ceiling can be the star. This is a nice visual because there are open shelves on either side like ours will have.

Here’s another example (from here) but I was a weirdo and drew over it in photoshop. So you can kind of picture how floating shelves flanking the hood would look head-on.  This actually looks a lot like our kitchen’s layout as you sit at the peninsula.

So yeah… we’re going to try to build a wood frame to attach to the wall and house our new $60 JennAir vent since we looked up some prices for wood hoods that are built by someone else…. and let’s just say I spewed orange juice all over my computer when I caught a whiff of the cost (from here):

We’re not 100% sure on the actual hood-box shape (some are boxier and some have that little stem at the top) but we’ll keep you posted. Might just tape out a few shapes on the tile and see what we like.

Oh and as for the two pendant lights we’ll be adding over the peninsula, we hit up one of our favorite local lighting outlets (The Decorating Outlet on Midlothian for any locals out there), where we found the exact same lights we had been ogling in this post about a month ago! We couldn’t believe they had two of them in the same finish and everything. They’re currently $129 here, but the outlet was selling them for $60 a pop. So for less than the cost of one ($120 total) we got two! We think they’re going to make a huge statement in the kitchen, and considering that big box stores are currently selling similar stuff for $100+ each, we thought it was a great deal.

The finish that we chose may surprise you (or not, haha) but we actually went with oil-rubbed bronze. Since there are already a ton of nickel/stainless accents in the kitchen (hardware, appliances, the industrial stools) we thought it might add up to a more layered/interesting look to pepper in some ORB. We’re huge fans of mixing metals as long as both types of metal occur a few times so it looks intentional (so there’s not one odd man out while the rest is a different finish, which can look kind of weirdly accidental). So we’ll be bringing in a few other dashes of the rich almost-black finish so it’s nice and balanced looking – especially with the mocha cork floors. We also love that the pendants are hugely visible through the large doorway to the dining room, since that room has things like an oil-rubbed bronze door knob, curtain rod, etc – so they should layer right into the mix.

Now we just have to hang the pendants, wrestle that hood into place, build a custom wood range hood cover, add some floating shelves, finish the trim, lay some cork floors, install the dishwasher, and a few other things that my brain is probably intentionally forgetting to keep my blood pressure down. But we’re getting there! We’re like the blogging tortoises of kitchen renos. Picture us crawling along with little laptops tucked away in our shells. Oh and on the subject of hoods and lights, have you guys be dabbling in those areas lately? Any lucky craigslist or outlet scores lately?

Now for the cabinets. We promised to share all of the other places we hunted/solutions we considered when it came to the office built-ins (mentioned here) – because our thrift store cabinets definitely weren’t the first things we found. And we figure since not everyone can stumble upon six cabs for six bucks (uh, we never even thought that was possible until this recent discovery) we hoped that detailing a few other options that we considered might help anyone else who can’t find secondhand cabinets that work for them. So here we go, on a virtual cabinet-hunting whirlwind of sorts…

Our first stop was actually the Richmond Habitat for Humanity ReStore, but we didn’t find much in the way of cabinets. We did find that Clara loves the breeze from a big industrial fan.

And that they had this crazy big leather / zebra-print lounger thing if anyone’s interested. Tres practical for storytime, no?

The cabinet situation though was almost enough to make us give up on the ReStore entirely (everything was too tall or too wide and we couldn’t find six identical cabinets (or three identical double-wide-ones) that would work to make our wall of built-ins look related enough (and not like a mismatched secondhand cabinet sale). They did put us on a notification list in case anything that matched our needs came in, which was nice (never knew they did that).

So next we dragged the kiddos (yes, Burger included) to Lowe’s and Home Depot to see if their stock cabinets could do the trick. They had a lot of affordable-ish options for unfinished cabinets in a slew of shapes and sizes. Our rough math put us at about a $300 investment for three double-wide cabinets (to create left, middle, and right cabinets with two open spaces for our chairs along the built-in wall like this). Then we could have just painted them and topped them with a wood counter, which wouldn’t have been too bad for a wall of built-ins and a nice long two-person desk (around $400 for two desks or something custom built-in along an entire wall sounded about right I guess).

The only hitch in our plan were the cabinet sizes. Base cabinets were the perfect depth for a standard counter (24″) but their toe-kick made them too high (35″) for our chairs (27″). We contemplated adding casters to our chairs to make them higher, but weren’t sold on the idea (especially because 2″ casters might be cool, but 4″ casters would be a bit much for our chairs). So we looked at 30″ upper cabinets instead, but at only 12″ deep it’d make for either a super narrow desk or cabinets that floated a foot away from the wall. Definitely something we could remedy by buying additional lumber, but again, not ideal.

Then it was time to do some Craigslist surfing, but nothing turned up in the way of cabinets that would be the right depth or height off the bat (and we worried about sacrificing stability and making things look a little – uh, shady- by trying to cut something down or build it out). If we had found something super cheap or almost perfect (like our much-shorter-than-average $6 ReStore cabinets) we would definitely have pounced on them. Even for around $100 for the set. But nothing with the right dimensions came up after a few consecutive weeks of checking back.

Then we turned to Ana-White.com to see if we could find any awesome plans to build something ourselves (like the plans that inspired our giant console table build). There were definitely a few workable options, but we realized that a lot of the plans would cost more than $30 per cabinet (thanks to lumber, hardware, hinges, and interior fittings) – and because we noticed that many secondhand cabinets on craigslist and in thrift stores were under $30 (and some were priced waaaay under that), it made us wonder if we’d actually spend more building something than retrofitting something existing.

Next we checked out Ikea. From their website, it looked like we could build their cabinets without a toe-kick, making them the perfect height (around 28-30″ instead of 35″+, which would be too tall for our existing chairs (even if we added casters to them). Score! And we all know Ikea has tons of customization options, so it was starting to feel like a perfect solution… even if it was a bit pricier – roughly about $500 if I did my math right, since we definitely wanted doored cabinets over open shelving (for Clara reasons along with the general desire to very roughly mimic the look of the base cabinets from our built-ins – though not exactly). We were actually pretty invested in this being a good solution, so I started mapping it out using their online planner tool (technically for kitchens) since we were planning a stop there after our visit with Cat, Travis, Elsa and their new son Edison.

But that trip to Ikea never happened, thanks to our decision to give the Alexandria Habitat For Humanity ReStore a chance while out of town. Though even that trip started off somewhat discouraging. They certainly had more cabinets than our ReStore in Richmond…

…but the prices weren’t necessarily screaming “take me home” at first. Yowsa.

Of course, that was until we came across the ones in the very back with $1 stickers on them that screamed “You’d be an idiot not to take us home. We’re six friggin dollars!” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Well, not totally history – there’s still lots to do to these puppies. But that’s a story (and a project) for another day. Someday soon hopefully. You know Sherry and her propensity to paint anything that doesn’t move…

So in summary, it was harder than we thought to find cabinets that were deep enough (24″) and not too tall (over 30″) and we ended up checking two thrift stores, two home improvement stores, an online build-it-yourself website, a Swedish warehouse, and the list of a man named Craig. The cost of the project ranged from around $300-$500 at most places that actually had things that might work (not including a countertop), which was definitely making us sweat a little. Custom built-ins can obviously add function and value to a house, but unlike adding a patio to a monkey-grass-riddled side yard, it somehow felt a bit more like a rushed gamble to spend half of 1K on a desk, at least for cheap-os like us (who built our current desk from an old bathroom door). So we’re glad we took our time and eventually came across something around 95% cheaper. The lesson: hold out if you can, and leave no stone (or store) unturned (unvisited?). Whenever we dive in too soon we get all nervous and twitchy and sometimes even lay awake wondering if we rushed into something that might not be the best thing for our house/lifestyle in the long run. So there you go.

What have you hunted down after visiting a bunch of stores or googling a ton of options? Is there some sort of magic number (like five places) that usually results in a major score? Have you been searching for something for months or even years that continues to allude you? Isn’t it funny how the perfect thing is always in the last place you look? Probably because once you find it you finally stop looking.

Psst- The lady wife did a fun little interview about how our blog has grown and revealed a lot of behind the scenes blogging and book-writing info for anyone interested right here (it’s long, but full of tons of juicy stuff, at least in my humble husband opinion). We’re also over on BabyCenter talking about a sweet little boy’s nursery that we crashed (coolest light fixture we’ve seen in a long time).

While there, Elsa’s mom, Cat (who is Sherry’s BFF that we introduced to my cousin back in 2007 – and now they’re married with two kids) took us to this cool shop in Old Town, Alexandra called Red Barn Mercantile. It had tons of beautiful stuff, but what caught our eye most was this bowl of vintage printing press letters.

Six bucks later we snagged a “C” so that Clara can be now represented amongst our original collection of letters and numbers (7, J, S, L, O, V, E). The first three were purchased at a NYC flea market just weeks after we started dating on 7/7/05 (which explains our love of the number 7) and the last four came from a flea market in DC a few years later. We also looked for a “B” for Burger, but they only had lowercase ones (which just look like a “d” instead, since they’re backwards). Sorry Burgs! The search for an uppercase B continues…

But that’s admittedly not that amazing as $6 purchases go. It was actually our other $6 find on that trip that we’re still pinching ourselves about. You ready for this jelly?

Six dollars got us more than just this cabinet hardware…

…it even got us more than this whole cabinet…

…it actually got us SIX CABINETS. All for just six measly dollars. Not each. Total.

If you’re in as much disbelief as I was when Sherry first told me about her find (Clara was napping in the car, so I stayed outside with her and Sherry went in and called me with the details), here’s some proof:

We found them at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Alexandria (sooooo glad we decided to swing by there while visiting the area) and they truly were just selling them for a dollar each. Apparently they were once nightstands at a hotel. The hotel donated a truckload of them and the ReStore had finally gotten rid of them all (priced at $15 each)… until some overzealous purchaser brought back a bunch that he had leftover. So the ReStore guy told us they priced them at just $1 to get rid of them quickly (they already made their money we assume, since they have a No Refund policy).

Oh and for anyone worried about bedbugs, I’m an obsessed checker-outer due to a life-changing encounter with them back in NYC, so I frantically looked over every inch of them like a paranoid weirdo before taking them home (and then did another thorough check once at home, just to be sure). You can read about that harrowing NY experience here. When it comes to what I look for, I’ve learned that bed bugs are visible to the naked eye, so you should be able to see them and their droppings if you look everything over and check cracks & crevices. They also don’t like slick surfaces like glossy cabinets or plastic bags and prefer softer things like mattresses and upholstery where they can more easily walk, along with dark crevices where they can lurk/hide/ruin your life. So when buying something with more places to hide than cabinets (like an upholstered armchair) you’ll want to be extra careful – but you should still see some evidence of them in the form of small little stains on the upholstery, usually along the seams – which are (shudder) their droppings. You can also leave things in a holding area like a garage or sunroom for a day or two and recheck them again before bringing them inside.

And speaking of getting them home, miraculously we could fit two into our Altima – even with all of our travel gear like a pack & play, a dog crate, a baby in a big ol’ carseat, a husband, a wife, etc (one cabinet fit in the trunk and the other sat in the front seat while Sherry rode in the back with the Burger, the bean, the pack & play, and the folded up dog crate). The ReStore held the others since my dad was serendipitously going to be in the same area for a meeting (he drives a Honda Pilot so the remaining four fit nicely inside). We’re usually the suckers without any means to get big things anywhere (especially when we’re so far away from home), so it was a nice change of pace. I guess these $6 cabinets were just meant to be ours…

Well, as evidenced above, they actually cost us $6.30 with tax. So I guess it was the best six dollars and thirty cents that we ever spent.

They certainly don’t feel like shoddy $1 cabinets. I mean, just check out the interior fittings on them. Hellooooo slide-out shelves!

If you didn’t already connect the dots, they’re meant for our built-in office workstation that we talked about in this post and we hope to set them up like this: two cabinets against the left wall, open space for a chair, two cabinets in the middle, open space for a chair, two cabinets against the right wall to create built-ins that we discussed right here in this floor planning post…

… just like the set up in this inspiration room (found here on Pinterest, originally from here):

With that arrangement we’ll have exactly 30″ for each of our chair openings, which is perfect since our chairs are 24″ wide (and six inches of wiggle room is a lot more than we have in our current small-homemade-desk-made-from-a-door situation). Of course our new cabinet friends do need a bit of work before they’re ready to move in permanently. For starters, they need a coat of primer and some glossy white paint (they appear to be 100% solid wood, so they should be great when it comes to adhesion and durability like traditional painted cabinets). Oh but we’re not going to paint the inside of them (lots of white built-ins actually have wood interiors – which hide marks and smudges a little more, too). All of the new white KraftMaid drawers from our first kitchen were wood on the inside, and we really loved it. But don’t worry, we’ll share all the painting details as we go.

We also need to do something about their height, because they’re only about 26″ tall and our chairs are 27″ (so the arms wouldn’t even slide under them if we added a countertop at this point).

Ideally we’d like our desk to be about 30″ tall, so I’m thinking I’ll build just a simple box on top of each cabinet pairing that I can paint along with the cabinets so they look seamless. Haven’t decided if it’s worth building it as a little open shelf up there or just fronting it with a solid piece of wood (kinda like those dummy drawers in front of kitchen sinks). Or we could build them up from the bottom. Not sure yet, but we’ll definitely keep you posted.

It was not only amazing to find $1 cabinets, but to realize that they weren’t too tall like 99.9% of the base cabinets out there (which are 35″ and hard to cut down since they’re one solid piece that includes the kickstep) was such a relief. Plus they were still deep enough for a desk (upper cabinets were the right height but only 12″ deep, which would make for a very very skinny desk or all need to be built out from the back with a lot more lumber than building these up a few inches). So yeah, we’re psyched. After some pretty thorough searching, the cabinet gods were good to us. Which was especially nice after the file cabinet gods weren’t as sweet (we searched for eight months for secondhand file cabinets for the office and ended up giving up and spending $150 on this system from Ikea). You win some, you lose some I guess.

Anyway, since not everyone can stumble upon the cabinet equivalent of The Dollar Store, we thought you might appreciate hearing the other places that we looked and the other solutions that we considered (of which there were maaaany). So we’ll be back to fill you in on all of that research / legwork / consideration in a few hours. Hopefully sharing a few other options that we considered may help someone else who can’t find secondhand cabinets that work for their project. In the meantime, what’s the best under-ten-dollar purchase that you’ve made? Was it clothing? House related? Did you buy a movie ticket and meet the man of your dreams there? Someone out there has to have one of those should-be-made-into-a-movie stories.

She also touched on our pedicure adventures…

… and mountaintop enjoyment…

It’s all here (update: just remember to click over later or tomorrow since her blog is giving her grief).

But back to our little Goodwill excursion. We decided that trolling the aisles of a thrift store in search of stuff that was take-home worthy might be blog worthy (“might” being the operative word). So here’s what we came away with: an 11 minute video of two giddy weirdos who giggle like 5th graders whenever some sort of innuendo slips in. So to answer your impending questions: no, we don’t know what our malfunction is. And yes, this regression is probably Freudian. So think of us not as adults and mothers but as two immature gals who can’t calm down for thirty minutes to make anything remotely polished and posed. For those at work who can’t watch it, just envision twelve year old girls braiding each other’s hair and jumping on the bed while having a pillow fight after applying sparkly nail polish and swooning over a Bon Jovi poster. And for those who can watch it: I’m sorry. We just can’t help ourselves. Tweens may get hyper after too much sugar during a sleepover, but we’re like that at Goodwill at noon.

A few things to note:

• We used our usual insane method of video entry by squatting and then standing up into frame (first established here).
• Somehow we managed to reference male parts, maxi pads, and bras in under eleven minutes of tape. Yes, we’re ashamed.
• Katie’s shirt is from the J Crew Outlet (I loved it so much I had to ask, and I figured you guys would too).
• We used a bleep. Somehow they just make everything funnier (but maybe only if you’re us).
• The way John walks through frame holding Clara while I’m talking about those tiny chairs kills me (it’s his Vanna White expression).
• I’m wearing Katie’s flip flops, which is why they’re a little big (my wedges weren’t “proper attire” for running around all day).
• There’s a dorky Friends reference in there. Almost immediately. Please tell me you noticed.
• Katie is about a foot taller and ten times more glamorous than I am (aka: no need to comment about my short shorts + pasty leg combo).
• People walk by. The intercom blares. But not one employee asked what we were up to or told us to stop. Even when we filmed at the checkout. Gotta love those friendly Georgians.
• At one point you can hear the song “Yackity Yack” playing in the background. Sweet soundtrack, right?

And now for a Yackity Yack dance break (the visuals are kinda boring, so might I suggest scrolling down as it plays?):

Oh and we meant to work a little end section into the video about what NOT to buy at Goodwill, but since the video was waaay longer (and substantially more embarrassing) than we expected, we didn’t want to drag it out. So here are a few shots of what NOT to buy at Goodwill:

All in favor of not buying those things, say I. Oh and you might wonder how Jeremy, Will, John, and Clara kept themselves busy while we Flip cam’d our way through the store. Well, things like giant wooden spoons kept them entertained:

Seriously, every time John brought it near Clara’s mouth she opened wide like a bald little baby bird:

And while we’re on the Goodwill hunting topic (I’ll pause while someone says “how about them apples”), what treasures have you found at Goodwill or Salvation Army or other places of the like? Have you seen anything that was so mind-numbingly crazy that you actually had to pick it up and examine it more closely to make sure it was, in fact, real (for me it was the gilded ceramic double unicorn vase – I thought they only existed in alternate universes). Come on, it’s Thursday afternoon. Let’s gab.

Psst- A big fat thanks to sweet Katie Bower for being such an amazing host and friend and fellow weirdo. So glad we met thanks to this crazy world of blogging and actually surpassed the “blog friend” title to become real life BFFs. Miss you already girl. And you didn’t burn that fajita meat, it was just well done. Just the way I like it.

Psssst- To watch some other terrible KB + SP = gigglefest videos, here’s one, here’s another, here’s yet another, here’s one more, and here’s another one. That’s a lot of giggling.

Here’s the obligatory “Clara with her great-Granny” shot. Aren’t they cute and purple-tastic?

We were only there for around 36 hours, meaning that Saturday was our big day packed full of stuff – like walking around town, shopping, going to the park, and getting ice cream. We even got Clara a new friend at a fun gift store called Mug and Pia after finally stumbling upon the giraffe Jellycat that we’d been looking for, oh, only the last ten months. As you can tell, Clara was super excited about it.

Mug and Pia also had these cool frames made from recycled tires where you could see all of the scratches and imperfections from their previous days on the road. The matte finish was actually really great.

Perhaps the most interesting adventure of the day was hitting up an area of town called Old Central City that’s bursting at the seams with antique and vintage shops.

And even though the outside makes it look kinda like an old western ghost town, the shops are crammed with cool stuff (and even the occasional person).

There were a bunch of beautiful / weird / quirky things that caught our eye in the half dozen or so antique shops that we popped into. For example, we thought these ornate white candle sconces were fun (and could probably rock a bold color like teal or plum).

And of course Sherry was attracted to just about every ceramic / glass / metal animal that she spotted, including this open-mouthed horse head (she finally proclaimed it “too grinny” and moved on)…

…and this big iron alligator (which was the favorite by far, but at nearly $30 it just wasn’t priced to come home with us).

I was more into things like these old books, which managed to look graphic and cool even when they were about boring topics like concrete. These could almost be mounted right to the wall (or popped into a shadow box) as art. Actually blowing up those covers and framing them or even getting them made into oversized canvases would be amazing. Boo on me for not buying them.

I’m also a sucker for old bottles and retro packaging, so this shelf of old timey toiletries and “snake oils” caught my eye. Although I was a bit grossed out that the Grenadine Syrup was still full of thick gloppy liquid. Nasty.

And of course, how could I not gravitate toward oversized typography like this art deco sign. It reminded us a lot of the letters in Chuck’s studio from this house crashing (second pic from the bottom). If the letters A, B, O or T had any special meaning to us I seriously would’ve tried to cram one into the car.

The one purchase we did make was this set of oversized decorative keys. They were 8 bucks for the whole set, and once Sherry gets out the ol’ white paint we hope to work them into our hallway frame gallery (pics when we do).

And no trip to an antique store is complete without seeking out those weird and wonderfully quirky items too. Like this beer sign that we laughed about hanging over Burger’s crate. It reads “You’ll like Burger: the beer you can stay with.” I don’t know why Clara wasn’t cracking up too. Probably because she can’t read.

One shopkeeper turned a vintage cheese grater into a light source by just stuffing some Christmas lights inside. Not a bad look, actually (we could picture a string of them placed down the center of a rustic old farm table).

And if you want to relive some political campaigns of yesteryear, these retro buttons have you covered – especially if you were a Carter / Mondale fan (there were TONS of those). So funny and random.

If  trophies with chickens on them is more your speed, I left these two behind for ya. I liked pretending that someone won them in a series of weird competitions like “Most Chickens Carried During The 400-Yard Dash” and “Rooster Relay Semifinalist.”

My favorite discovery in the weird category was actually this blast-from-the-past sign that hung at the register of one of the shops. It’s a flyer from Yellowstone National Park warning visitors about buffalo attacks. My family actually got one of these when we visited Yellowstone in 1998. I thought it was so hilarious (maybe inappropriately so) that I saved it and hung it on my dorm room door in college. For some reason I was extremely entertained by the idea of my friends being warned that in my dorm room “many visitors have been gored by buffalo.”

I no longer have my copy (and this one was sadly not for sale) so if you ever come over to our house and are gored by a buffalo, my apologies that you were not adequately warned.

We continued the weird theme into lunch when we opted to grab lunch at Hillbilly Hot Dogs (not to perpetuate any West Virginia stereotypes or anything).

They were quite creative with the hillbilly theme – so if you’re going for that vibe in your house, start taking notes. Some of their more unique table options included one where you sat in a bathtub with a shower curtain around you (the fold-down table was even supported by a plunger). Another was an outhouse where your seats were – well, I’m sure you can guess what you’d sit on in an outhouse. On the right you can see my mom modeling the outhouse with baby Finn:

Oh, and if the decor isn’t enough of a reason to go, the hot dogs were definitely worth the trip. They’ve got a menu full of different options and toppings like pepperoni, eggs, bacon, slaw and salsa. Insane. But better than they looked (because we can admit that this picture might not convey the level of deliciousness that was enjoyed by all).

Now that we’ve shared photos of meat garnished with meat, we oughta wrap this up. Oh, and if anyone was wondering how Clara did during two 6.5-hour car rides just days apart – she was a champ. There was far less sleeping than the last time that we did the drive (back when she was 2.5 months old) but she managed to entertain herself for most of the trip. And we listened to her favorite CD (from baby music class) whenever she got grumpy. Let’s just say “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain,” while appropriate for the scenery, got old. But Clara was happy, so all was well.

Actually, the only “rough” part of the trip was when Sherry accidentally sprayed the inside of the car with a must-have-previously-been-shaken can of Fresca from Granny. I was a case of Grandma sabotage I tell ya. Just kidding, it was most definitely an accident. Lucky for the rest of us, Sherry’s pants bared the brunt of the assault. Gotta love Señorita Sticky Legs for taking one for the team like that.

So that’s the latest on our travels. Have you guys been anywhere fun? We’re always looking for new places to check out so we’d love any and all suggestions. Especially if they’re within driving distance. You know we love a good road trip…

Psst- Check out our favorite road trip ever here.

You’re probably thinking: what are they thinking?! Parsons chairs? Yup, that’s exactly what we’ve wanted since day one. Thirty bucks? Yeah baby. Weird green and blue swirly pattern? Um… no comment.

But since the price was right (we actually bargained them down to $25 per chair, coming to $200 total for all 8) and the shape/lines were right (they’re solid and very well-made) we figured it was time to pounce (with some reassurance from a few online tutorials about dyeing fabric, making slipcovers, or reupholstering parsons chairs). So in the end we hope to end up with eight affordable and well made parsons chairs without this… uh… “unique” fabric. Hopefully sooner rather than later…

As for how we got them home, I borrowed my sister’s Explorer (since I knew we couldn’t fit them in our Altima without making at least three trips) and drove 90 minutes round trip to Mechanicsville to pick up the chairs. I wish I’d brought the camera (or was fancy enough to have a decent cell phone cam) because the guy selling them lived on a giant horse farm, so the scenery was beautiful. And since Sherry and Clara stayed at home (to make room for more chairs in the car) I wished that I could have taken some photos so they could see it.

The guy selling them was a real character. I expected to pick up the chairs from his dining room, but instead he led me back to a bunch of large storage crates in his backyard (I must admit this is where craigslist horror stories started flashing through my mind and I wondered if I was being kidnapped). Then he rolled up the door to one of the storage crates to reveal that it was FILLED TO THE BRIM with these chairs. I never got the story behind how he ended up with so many, but my guess is that they came from some hotel auction or something. All that mattered is that they were in good condition (solid, sturdy, clean, no pet/smoke odors, etc) and that he was happy to let me put a dent in his collection and leave with eight of those babies.

Here I am back home with my booty (that’s not a butt reference, I mean the chairs), cheesy pose and all (sometimes I defer to cheesy poses when Sherry runs towards me with the camera, you know, just to humor her). And yes, I was extremely proud of fitting all eight of them into my sister’s car in one trip. There was even a call to Sherry where I told her I could only fit six so I needed to make two trips with a big fat “just kidding!” at the end.

As a reminder, here’s what the dining room looked like back when it was chair-less…

…and here it is now with eight new occupants. Actually only seven are pictured because Sherry likes that more breathable look for “everyday” (we can easily add in the eighth one when we need it – until then it’s hanging out in our chaotic playroom with 99% of our other “extra stuff”).

We keep having to remind ourselves to look past the crazy pattern and enjoy the fact that we scored a serious deal on the exact style of chair (with clean lines and solid construction) that we’ve been eying.

The best price we’ve seen so far on any new parsons chair is around $85 (Pottery Barn sells similar ones for $299!), so as long as we can correct the swirly fabric for less than $60 per chair, we made the right call. Even if it means that our dining room looks a bit like a hotel conference room for the time being…

Sherry found a few online tutorials for dyeing fabric directly on furniture that we might try (although dye = scary, so we might skip right to the next step, which would be to make slipcovers or reupholster them in the crisp apple green color that Sherry has been dreaming of from day one). So that’s the story of driving out to a farm and squeezing eight $25 chairs into my sisters car. Maybe you guys have recent craigstlist deals to share? Or an “I can’t believe I got that to fit into my car” tale to tell?

A few things that caught my eye were these $10 woven lamps (I think I would have spray painted them bright canary yellow or emerald green to take them from beachy and rustic to bright and ca-razy).

I also loved this huge woven ottoman.

Oh and this cute $20 bench reminded us of our $7 thrift store bench makeover a while back.

This side table was just $5. I would have grabbed it and tossed a fiver at the owner had there been another one to match for our bedroom (or even one that looked mildly similar). But alas. There was just one.

Here’s what I did grab after tossing a fiver at the owner. Yup, this geometric eight sided mirror was just five beans. Mine. I was so enamored I didn’t even remember to haggle him down to $4. Hah. Can’t wait to paint it something glossy and fun (lime? plum? I guess time will tell).

We also did a bit of non-thrift shopping along the boardwalk in Rehoboth.

At first glance this extra large calendar full of vintage map prints still seemed pricey at $20, but after flipping through it and adoring every page, we realized it was just $1.60 per print. And we can’t wait to frame them all and display them en masse. Seriously, there was a happy dance associated with this find. And it went on for hours.

We I also skipped to the cash register with one of these adorable $18 paper lantern pendants for the playroom. We knew I probably could have picked up a white paper lantern for around $5 and attempted to DIY my own painted hearts, but we reasoned that eighteen bones wasn’t too bad for such a smile inducing lantern that would probably surpass anything crafty that I could attempt. Especially since Ikea sells light kits for $5, so we’ll end up with an entirely new playroom light fixture for just $24 total.

Then it was back to the thrift stores & antique shops that abound. We stopped at this cute place called Millsboro Basaar Antiques…

… where I found these two crazy ceramic horse book ends for $2.50 a pop. No doubt the price break was thanks to their zany orange and black glaze, but I’m thinking I might just spray paint these babies for a whole new look. Maybe white. Maybe something bolder like navy or yellow.

This frog butler was just insane so I had to snap a pic. It reminded us of that funny Modern Family episode where Jay gets the life-sized dog butler and Gloria hates it.

This $15 guy was kinda fun, but I passed. Let’s just say John wasn’t as enamored as I was.

Oh and this $22 stuffed bear head was wall-mountable. So funny! We briefly considered it for the playroom but decided it was better left behind for someone with a woodland themed nursery (like Clara’s boyfriend Will- although word on the street is that his nursery might have a new inspiration when he moves).

Oh and this little $12 luggage rack was kinda perfect for the guest room makeover. So I snatched it up (and haggled them down to ten bones). We’re definitely planning to replace the ribbon that stretches across it, and the jury’s still out about the color, but it’s fun for now.

We slipped through Goodwill, just for kicks, but didn’t leave with anything. We did see some cute things stuff though, like this $2 bowl, which would be sweet for storing jewelry (I picture stacks of bracelets) on a dresser.

The funny thing about this $1 find is that it’s the exact same glass container that we bought a while back and used to create our T-giving “Thanks” jar.

Here’s another $2 bowl that could look charming holding anything from keys to jewelry or even all those extra buttons you get with shirts and coats. You save them out of fear like I do, don’t you? What if you need them someday? I never seem to, but you never know…

And here we are having some good old fashioned beach fun. First there’s beanarina and daddy looking pretty darn happy.

Next we have Clara showing off her two adorable front teeth. What an accomplishment! So proud.

Oh and here she is playing in the sand. Trepidatiously. But still sort of playing none the less.

Good times! I’ll be back later with a breakdown of everything we actually bought home with us (we gave ourselves an $100 thrifting & shopping budget and we came home with 12 items – well, 23 if you count our calendar as 12 prints, since we’ll be framing ‘em individually). Wahoo. More on that in a few hours…

I guess he’s actually a goose. Where he’ll go and what color he’ll be painted is still up in the air (oh look at that, a flight pun). But we figured we could do something fun with our plucky friend, so we brought him home. It was actually my suggestion – although we all know my wife has a penchant for collecting faux animals – I guess this old-school bird was just calling my name this time. And I didn’t exactly have to twist Sherry’s arm. Perhaps it’s the beginning of our own pink duck collection a la HGTV’s Antonio. Well, pink’s not really my jam but I would go for lime or navy or pretty much anything else. Sherry mentioned bold glossy plum about an hour ago. Could be interesting…

We spotted him during a day of thrifting on Richmond’s northside. Our goal was to find some nightstands or even a dresser, but in the end we only came home with El Goose and a silver quatrefoil tray that happens to resemble a certain mirror that we purchased a few weeks ago.

Not quite sure where that’ll end up yet either, but the ol’ ball and chain loves to place random trays on top of stacks of hardcover books, dressers, console tables, and nighstands for everything from lip gloss and hair bands to jewelry or keys. And Sherry murmured something about loving the fact that it’s not ceramic/breakable, which fits into our attempt to make this house virtually kid proof (hence all the ceramic animals being stored up high in the built-ins). This goal means we’d love if the whole extended family could come to stay and we wouldn’t worry about nieces and nephews blowing through and shattering things as they go. Of course it’s not exactly toddler friendly if it’s used as a weapon, so we’ll have to keep it out of reach of the little ones. But it should be great up on a console or dresser.

Total cost for both buys: under $12. Not a bad price for a bit of art & a smidge of organization. Btw, the duck was from Pass It On in the Lakeside Towne Shops and the dish was from Consignment Connection, also on Lakeside Avenue for any locals who are wondering.

So now at least you have the backstory in case you happen to spot what looks like a goose migration going on in the background of one of our pictures in the near future. Why not add a wooden friend to a house full of white ceramic ones? The menagerie madness continues.

Psst- Who doesn’t love a little organizing? Check out this week’s BabyCenter post all about Sherry’s system for storing outgrown baby clothes, blankets, the Boppie, and her not-gonna-need-that-for-a-while maternity stuff.

Our concept was to make the inside of each cup yellow and the outside of each one white, just for a little two-tone fun. So we thought up a few ways that might work when it came to accomplishing that effect. First we debated spraying the whole thing white and then covering the outside with painter’s tape and then spraying in the inside yellow. But we reasoned that it would be harder to spray the inside of the cups (and the painter’s tape might peel off the new-ish paint) so we decided to start by spraying the inside of each cup with yellow paint, which of course got on the outside a bit as well:

Then instead of messing with painter’s tape we decided to try rolling up a piece of white paper and slipping it into each cup (to hopefully shield the yellow spray painted interior from the coat of white spray paint that we then applied to the outside).

Here’s what it looked like after that coat of white was added:

We had no idea if it would actually work, so when we removed the rolled up piece of paper from each cup after the paint dried, we were pleasantly surprised to see that we were left with a nearly perfect result:

And it honestly only took about three minutes to complete the entire project (not counting the five hour drying period that we allowed for after spraying the yellow and before slipping in the white sheets of paper in and spraying the outside white).

We love the idea of using them for flameless candles so the yellow interiors are illuminated without the risk of setting our whole house on fire. You know, because that would be bad.

What about you guys? Are you spray painting anything in a two tone finish? Are you morally opposed to faux candles because you think they’re tacky (you know those small battery operated fake-os)? I must admit I resisted them for a while but for things like this they’re tres handy.

So I spray painted that sucker with some glossy yellow paint (Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch Gloss spray paint in Sun Yellow)…

… and ended up with a nice new (and super cheap) accessory in a fun and happy color. Here he is accompanied by his three candle friends. Anyone humming Beauty & The Beast yet? Totally reminds us of Lumiere.

Simple? Check. Cheap? Check? Anyone can do it? Check. Plus we’re planning to do a little seasonal decorating and we think this guy will come in handy for all sorts of occasions (Halloween, Thanksgiving, fall in general, etc). So stay tuned to see a few fun arrangements with our new yellow candlestick.

And speaking of quick thrift store makeovers, what have you guys been transforming on the cheap? Any other candlestick projects going on?