Feelin’ Thrifty
Petersik Hotel & Conference Center
We finally scored some chairs for the dining room, thanks to this craiglist ad emailed to us by our friend Sandra (muchas gracias!).
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?
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Beach Bums
Remember we mentioned on Monday that we were taking it easy and enjoying some family time? Well we were actually at the beach! We snuck away to John’s parents’ beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware for a nice long weekend of R&R (while the guest bedroom took care of itself- just kidding it was just as messy when we returned, darn). We had lots of fun going on long walks, eating seafood, getting our thrift on, and bringing Clara down to the beach on a particularly warm day (it was 65+ degrees on Monday!). So we thought we’d share some of our adventures with you guys. First, we hit up our favorite secondhand shop in Bethany, Beach Plum Antiques (also seen in this post of yore).
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…
Duck!
No, nothing’s being hurled at your head (at least we hope not). We’re just sharing our latest purchase:
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 Cups Runneth Over
When we spotted these odd little metal cups for $1.50 a pop at Goodwill (which you may have noticed in our recent Halloween post) we decided to take them home for a speedy little spray paint makeover. We fell in love with the little cut-out shape and since we already had yellow and white spray paint around (thanks to this project and this project) we got right to work.
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.
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Jack Be Nimble
I’m back with an easy thrift store upgrade. John and I snagged this seen-better-days brass candlestick at Goodwill for $1.99 after I convinced him that a bright and modern color would complement the traditional shape for a clean and current result in about five minutes flat.
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?
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