Don’t make me choose

Gosh, I love a great find. It’s definitely a genetic thing, My mom is a supreme bargain hunter. At 86, she’s not web savvy enough to find her way to my blog (Phew!!!), but she does know to search for clearance-priced kids clothes and fill an on-line shopping cart with bargains from a store that’s six states away.

There’s a special pride, I think, in finding something of (material) value at an unexpectedly low price; it’s like a treasure hunt. My sister-in-law was beaming the other night about a shopping score she made last week: a $400 dress for $19 on a boutique clearance rack. “I have no idea where I’ll wear it, but I wasn’t passing that up!”

Those kind of finds are memorable. And while I rarely pay full price for clothing, my greatest scores come from my furniture finds, because I see, use, and enjoy them every day.

….which of course makes today’s “Where Bloggers Live” topic, “Favorite Furniture,” a very easy post.

Speaking of furniture, ahem, weren’t you making a new ottoman…or at least claiming that you were?

OUCH! That was cold.

True, I DID say I was doing that, because it was “going to be simple.”

Seriously, when do I ever think something is “simple”? Well, that’s a post for another day, but for an interim answer to your question:

Inspiration:

How it started:

How it’s going: a very typical DustandDoghair tale…. and you’re likely to see I strayed from “simple” when I finally post about it, but suffice to say that I do better with complex, not “easy.”

But you know what is easy? Loving my Craigslist furniture finds!

Mr and I have purchased plenty o’furniture over the years, but it’s the pieces I’ve found on Craiglist or yard sales that are the decorative storage space of all my furniture-based affection. (That’s possibly the dumbest sentence I’ve ever written. How many times did you have to read it to understand it?)

I think it started with this old painted dresser I found for the back hall for about $20.

It was painted a streaky, mustardy yellow and whoever did it painted right over the hardware… and I love the whole thing…AS IS. How ironic though; if I had painted it and it turned out that way, I would obsess over those details as a detriment. Someone else does it, and I’m grooving the vintage vibe.

Weirdo.

Next was an old sewing cabinet, $10.

It too was given the streaky paint treatment by its owner, this time in a pale green.

I added a glass shelf to the bottom and it was great in our living room as a lamp table for a lot of years. Somewhere I have a better picture of it, but these are the best I could find for today. I wish I still had that table, so I’m recreationally keeping my eyes peeled for another one.

Another yard sale find was a secretary desk, a $30 score that was NOT painted when I purchased it. The drawer pulls were a little ornate, so I removed the back plates, painted it black, replaced the desk pad and it was perfect.

The secretary was eventually moved to the upstairs hallway, having been replaced in the living room by a beautiful serpentine chest I found at a barn sale:

Well, erm, it wasn’t exactly beautiful when I found it, which is why this was the first piece I ever tried stripping (and the first blog post ever written in film noir style). I wish I could have taken the entire thing all the way down to the bare wood, but some of it was in rough shape, The drawers are a little wonky, but the beautiful curves provide an adequate distraction.

For a while, I was regularly on the hunt for gate leg tables. Gate legs have a narrow center section, with sides that fold up and down so they take up little space when not in use. If you need more table space, you simply fold up one or both sides and swing out a support leg (as you’d open a gate). I’ve collected a bunch of these tables and love using them when we have holiday celebrations. They’re great as a coffee, dessert, or hors d’oeuvres station.

There’s a gorgeous gate leg at a nearby Von Maur store that I looooooove. It’s round and larger than the average gateleg. It has barley twist legs and a pie crust edge around the table top. Finding a table like that would be the ultimate score, and while I’ve never paid more than $80 for one of my tables, I’d be willing to go off my bargain diet for one of those (which would become the centerpiece of our front hallway). This one is not as meaty, but gives you an idea of what it looks like:

If I HAD to pick a favorite piece, I’m not sure I could. I think it would be a three-way tie between the mustard dresser, the serpentine dresser and this table.

Whoops! That was the “Before” version.

I wrote about it here, when I spent a couple years weeks stripping it. Actually, I procrastinated a couple of years, then finally got down to business and ACTUALLY stripped it. THEN ended up painting it anyway.

Weirdo.

But there isn’t a day when I don’t come downstairs without it catching my eye with the furniture equivalent of “Heyyyyy, baby,” I’m grateful that Mr bullied me into finishing it. Really! In fact, remind me to thank him, (even though at the time I was thinking more along the lines of an imagined face flick to show my “gratitude” for his helpful nudging).

Lately, I’ve been perusing the listings for a dining room buffet. I can’t find THE ONE I have pictured in my head, so something from Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace might be a good placeholder until THE ONE appears.

I have to say, however, when I DO bring home that find, I will likely be the one on the receiving end of the wishful face flick. I can almost hear Mr groaning when I bring it home: “Oh no, here we go again.”

Meanwhile, I can’t wait to visit my blogging buddies for their furniture favs:

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Em at Dust and Doghair
(Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After  is on hiatus)
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style

AND…. a very warm welcome to Sally at Within a World of My Own

Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Over the next few months, a group of six bloggers will be sharing their workspaces, their homes, towns and more!

Make sure you visit everyone to see where the magic happens!