Category: garage sales.

Yesterday was the perfect day for a neighborhood garage sale and the stars must have been aligned in my favor because I came home with all of this.

We were in Highland Park, a neighborhood that runs along the side of the Mississippi River in St. Paul.  It is full of gorgeous old houses, many with really lovely gardens.  I should have brought my camera!

We filled up the truck before noon and then stopped off at Cecil’s Deli for lunch.  A true Jewish kosher deli.  It took me back to my days of living in Boca Raton, Florida which might have been the last time I enjoyed a legit east coast style Jewish deli.  I’m not at all sure what makes them so fabulous.  They always have the best pickles, and a fantastic selection of sandwich choices.  I had the “Nosher”; turkey, roast beef and swiss on caraway rye.  We took away some hamantaschen cookies to nosh on later.  Yum!

But … back to the goods.

I found quite a few pieces of pottery.

And I love these old metal glasses.  My grandpa used to make us root beer floats in these when I was a kid.  I can still remember how cold that metal used to get!

At an estate sale I found not just one, but two fab vintage typewriters.

I’ll confess, I didn’t buy the pair of shutters at a garage sale.  I bought them at a cute shop on Grand Avenue.  I loved their crackled paint, and I thought they would be perfect for either side of the window in the photo cottage.  And look, they are!

I grabbed this pair of vintage sleds because I think they make great decorations at Christmas time.

I’m debating painting on them like I did with this one last year.

What do you think?  Would people rather I left them alone?  Or added some fun wording?

I also brought home a couple of pieces of furniture that will eventually get a makeover.  The little mid-century nightstand is already sanded and ready to be painted, but the former owner gave up before the finish line.  I love getting these pieces where someone else has already done the hard part!  Unfortunately she misplaced the hardware, so I’m going to have to come up with some great replacement knobs for this one.

So, there you have it.  A productive day in Highland Park!

Are you headed up north for the holiday weekend?  Maybe to your lake home?  or your cabin in the woods?

If so, lucky you!  If not, you are also in luck because Sue is having a pop up vintage sale!

On a whim she decided to host a small sale at her house in her fabulous dining room … you remember her fabulous dining room right?

Well, now you have a chance to see it up close and personal with the added benefit of lots of lovely things for sale.

And I am guessing that you could easily take a quick spin around her garden in the back and she wouldn’t mind.

Need some ironstone?

Maybe some white platters?

Or perhaps some fabulous vintage linens?

This floral oil painting is simply gorgeous (please squint a little to try and ignore the reflection of me in my striped jacket taking this photo!)

There is some black to punctuate all of the white (and oh no, more of my stripes, clearly this was a bad clothing choice for taking photos).

And some lovely florals.

I even saw this guy poking his head out from a pile of stuff for sale.

The main reason Sue decided to have this sale was to offer up some of her gorgeous china.  The pieces are priced individually, so if you don’t want a whole set, but just some gorgeous plates to eat dinner on … or maybe a lovely set of dishes for serving just dessert, then this is perfect for you.  And omg, you can even see those stripes reflected in the platter!  Good gracious.

There are several lovely patterns to choose from.  Wouldn’t that small bowl be perfect on your dressing table to hold your bracelets?

 So, if you’ll be in town this weekend why not plan to swing by Sue’s house on Saturday morning?  I’m sure you’ll find something lovely to add to your home, and if nothing else just being near Sue’s gorgeous gardens and lovely home will inspire you!

Here are the details:

I’ve mentioned before that Sue and I work together, and occasionally we get called away to important breakfast meetings.  These mostly take place on Thursdays or Fridays in the summer, in other words, garage sale season.

We had one of these meetings this week.  It’s an annual sort of thing.  A small block sale just a mile or two from our office that we watch for every year.  We know what their signs look like, and Sue and I both drive right past the corner where they usually place one on our way in.  As soon as we got in to work, we both agreed it was time for an important breakfast meeting.

 One of the gals who participates in this block sale is an antiques dealer who is slowly selling off her inventory and getting out of the biz.  Her prices are always phenomenal and I manage to find lots of awesome stuff.

Wouldn’t this red and green tin be great at Christmas time?  It would make an awesome gift filled with cookies and bars.   And how much do you love that toy beater with its tiny red handle?  One could tie that on with twine to complete the gift.

The chair they are sitting on will be getting a chippy paint job for sure.

These old tennis rackets have the most fabulous patina.  For now I plan to keep them as potential future furniture photo shoot props.  If they don’t work out for that, they will likely make their way into my next sale.  They would be awesome hung on a wall.

I nabbed a pile of old buckets.  I love stenciling on these.  Some of these will get “French Market”, and some will probably get numbers.

 I also picked up some vintage ornaments to add to my collection.  You can’t really tell the scale from this photo, but the smaller round ornaments are about the size of marbles.  They will be great near the top of my tabletop trees.

And isn’t this “how to speak French” hankie cute?  I wish I was going to Paris, how fun to take this handy hankie along for quick and easy translation.  It would also be great tucked into a basket with a Paris guide book and maybe some French wine to create a fantastic bon voyage gift, if I knew someone going to France.

I did bring home a few more things that didn’t manage to make their way into the photos.  All in all, it was a very successful breakfast meeting!

Yesterday was the ‘ECCO Super Sale’.  At least that is what they call it.  You know, I have been going to this sale for years, but I have no idea what the extra ‘C’ stands for.  I know it’s the East Calhoun neighborhood, I think the ‘o’ at the end is for organization … but that extra ‘c’ … no idea.

And I’m not so sure about the ‘Super Sale’ part.  There were 58 houses participating this year, but I don’t know if it was super.  It poured rain the entire time!  Luckily my companion and I both wore fabulous rain boots.  We didn’t go around puddles, we just went right through them!  I haven’t been that soaked in a long time.  My raincoat turned out to not be so waterproof after all.  My ball cap was dripping wet by the end.  But we still had a great time, and even in the rain that neighborhood has some gorgeous houses, not to mention an awesome homemade taco stand.  Delicious!

Here is my tiny haul after a morning of slogging through the rain.

The table is quite rustic, in a good way.  I’m know I definitely won’t paint the top, but I’m toying with the idea of painting just the base.  I have another of these tables in the workshop at the moment, and I took the leaves off that one.  With the leaves off, one can use these as a small desk.  I’m going to have to study this one for a bit before I decide what to do with it.

I found a few nice glass pieces.  A large Pottery Barn bowl that would be great for serving salads or popcorn.  Another nice glass canister (Terri, do you need another one of these?), a square jar with a great green lid, and an awesome mid-century cocktail mixer.  I also came home with a pair of vintage green binoculars.  I’m thinking of keeping them as a prop for future furniture photo shoots.

This seems to be the year of the doll sized furniture.  In this case, a bow front china cabinet.  I don’t think it’s old, but is seems fairly well made.  I grabbed it mainly because I think it will be charming painted.

I love buying perennials at garage sales.  I have filled quite a bit of space in my garden with garage sale plants.  When you buy them this way, you can be fairly sure that they thrive in your climate, otherwise the seller wouldn’t have extras to sell.  Generally they also tend to be plants that spread for the same reason.  So, buyer beware, these things might take over your garden!  As might be the case with the Sweet Woodruff I purchased today.  I will plant it in my shade garden and hope it doesn’t take over too much territory.  And at 3 plants for $5, it’s hard to go wrong.

They look pretty cute in the tiny wagon I purchased, don’t they?

We called it quits a little earlier than usual due to being soaking wet, not to mention that I had plenty to do back here at home to get ready for the Carriage House Sale!  Here’s hoping that I have better weather for that!

 

There was a quiet little holiday weekend neighborhood sale in Minneapolis yesterday.  The Armitage and Kenny neighborhoods combined forces and there were about 45 houses participating.

It was a gorgeous morning, and because of the holiday there wasn’t much traffic or competition for the good stuff.

Although I didn’t fill up the truck, I did come home with some great stuff.

The blue motel chairs are perfectly chippy and fabulous.

I will paint the blue suitcase and the little wonky stool in front.  The vintage desk lamp will be great in future desk photo shoots.

I found a fun old Spartus 35 F camera, a fabulous old movie camera and some great vintage gardening books.

I’ve been adding stencils to old breadboards, and I found 3 good ones!

I’m hoping the glass shade will fit on a fixture I already have.

The chenille bedspread is a new reproduction (Martha Stewart in fact), and it is in great shape.  It’s always good to have extra white bedding.

We were home just a little after noon, and I already slapped some paint on the little stool.  First a coat of MMSMP in Flow Blue, followed by a thick coat of MMSMP in Eulalie’s Sky.  I wanted it to look chippy and old.

I popped it into the garden and took a couple of quick photos.  That host in the front is June.  I’m not sure what the little plant with the purple flowers is, I bought it at a garage sale!  Naturally.  It’s really looking gorgeous this year, covered in those purple flowers.  It will re-bloom later in the summer, but it won’t be as full of flowers as it is now.  Does anyone know what that is?

Can I mention that in the last week or so the garden has just popped?!  Stuff is up and blooming and looking fantastic.  I always love this time of year in the garden, before the slugs start eating the hostas, or a huge hail storm turns everything raggedy.  The fresh growth is pristine and beautiful.  Maybe I’ll have to take some more photos to share with all of you.

I staged the chippy stool with my new vintage garden books, and a fab vintage garden tool that I picked up at the estate sale while playing hooky.

I’m sure most of these items will make their way to the Carriage House Sale!

OK, I wasn’t exactly playing hooky.  It was a legitimate PTO day from the day job.  I had originally scheduled a couple of days off to extend the Memorial Day weekend and to get a bunch of stuff done before my upcoming Carriage House Sale.

But then, the forecast was perfect.  70 and sunny.   And to top it off, my new friend Michelle was willing to head out to the big city (Minneapolis, that is) with me to check out a garden center that I have always wanted to visit.  Furthermore, she’d spied an ad for an estate sale we could stop at on the way.  I was really playing hooky from a day planned for furniture painting.

It was so worth it.

The estate sale was fantastic.  A house crammed full of probably 75 years of stuff.  An attic to dig through.  And clearly Michelle knows how to dig!  Look at this incredible toy dresser she pulled out of a corner of the attic.

Those tiny glass knobs are to die for.

Michelle is going to use it in her shop, Rose Mille, to display ribbons and such.  First she will put her own touch on it by lining the drawers with some vintage wallpaper.  I can’t imagine anything more perfect for her.  Maybe Michelle will share an ‘after’ picture with us.  How about it Michelle?

After seeing this amazing find, I headed over to the same corner to see what else was there.  I saw a darling vintage metal toy stove and refrigerator, and a little toy sized carpet sweeper.  I passed on those items, but I had to have this little hutch.

Not nearly as fab as Michelle’s little dresser, but cute.  I knew I could up the cute factor with some milk paint too.

I wanted to keep the green and yellow vintage paper, so I decided on some MMSMP in Mustard Seed Yellow for the first coat, then a top coat of Linen.

Isn’t it sweet?

It’s the perfect spot to display a tiny little ironstone creamer and some vintage play silverware.

The base coat of yellow just peeks out around the edges.

I am sure that this sweet little hutch will end up at the Carriage House Sale and go home with some lucky shopper!

After a cold and rainy Friday, Saturday dawned bright and sunny.  Perfect garage sale weather.

This week’s neighborhood garage sale was in Blaine.  We had high hopes because they had 150+ sales, and even had official porta-potty locations and concessions stands.  Hey, it doesn’t take much to make die hard garage salers happy.

We got there and found tons of people.  Parking spots were few and far between.  We had to park and then walk …. and walk … and walk.  Luckily we had a cart to haul our goodies in, and I wore my serious walking shoes.

My first fab find was this old coffee jar.  I love these old jars.

My next great find was this old newel post.  The sellers told us all about how they took it out of their 1901 house.  We didn’t have the heart to ask what they put in its place.  I’m guessing something ‘new’.  Quelle horreur!  Why would you remove this?

I plan to try a MMS layered paint job on it to make it super chippy and shabby.

I grabbed this little camp stool just because I loved the shades of green on its seat.  Can’t you picture it next to a comfy chair with a stack of magazines on top?

My absolute best find of the day was this dress form.  Isn’t she lovely?

These have become so popular, you don’t see many of them at garage sales anymore.

There were a few more treasures in our truck, Bee’s Knees brought home a lovely waterfall style dresser that she is going to refurbish.  I found a few more small things for my occasional sale.  We must have walked miles, which certainly means we burnt off the corn dogs we ate, right?

Next weekend we are back in Minneapolis, most likely Linden Hills.  Hopefully there will be more fab finds waiting for us there.

 

We look forward to the Bryn Mawr neighborhood sale every year.  Probably because it’s the first big Minneapolis neighborhood sale of the season.  And also because we always come home with a truck load of goodies.

This year we had the truck filled by 10 a.m.

Now most people might have called it quits when the truck was full, but not us.  We are gluttons for punishment.  And sad thing is, we found almost nothing else after 10 a.m.  We may as well have gone home and taken naps after that.

But still, it was a fantastic day.  We are more than happy with our finds.

 It was a vintage luggage-palooza!  All of the suitcases came from one sale.  These days prices have gone up on vintage suitcases.  Sadly, I think the days of finding them for $3 each are long gone.  But this seller gave me a package deal on 4.  Now I have to decide, do I leave them as is, or do I paint them?  Any thoughts?

I know this dresser and desk combo will be painted!  No question there.  It’s just a matter of what colors.  I won’t keep them as a matched set.  If you’ve read my blog for long, you’ll know that I am opposed to matched sets of furniture.  Likely these two will go to separate homes, and they will be painted different colors.

So, now I seriously need to get crackin’ and paint some furniture!  It’s going to be sunny and warmer here today, so maybe I can actually get a few pieces painted in the Carriage House!

Yesterday started the neighborhood garage sale season in the Twin Cities.  I was so looking forward to it!  I’d been suffering serious garage sale withdrawal all winter.  Every year the Diamond Path neighborhood is the first big neighborhood sale.  They had over 100 homes in a fairly small area that were participating.

We’ve been going to this sale for many years and we know what to expect.  Crowds of people happy that spring is here, amazing homemade eggrolls for $1, but not a lot of fabulous finds.  We don’t usually come home with much of a haul, although last year we found quite a few things for Bees Knees new apartment.

Here’s what I came home with.

Definitely not a haul.  At the same time, I feel like each of these is a little treasure.  The little metal measuring cup with a lid is just like the one my mom always uses to make gravy.  I think I’ll use it to mix paint!  The little books are from 1905 and were a quarter each.  How do you pass that up?  The hand-painted creamer and sugar were $1 for the pair.  And look how pretty they are.  I still have a weakness for floral china, I just can’t help myself.

Underneath the china is a pair of embroidered pillowcases.

They are made out of the most delicious linen, you know, that heavy vintage stuff that you never find in new pillowcases.  And they are embroidered in white.  I looked all last year for white on white embroidered pillowcases and didn’t find any.  Now I have this pair for $2.  I’m guessing that these were never used, and likely never even washed because they still have the blue lines of the design under the stitching.  Those should wash out.

The chintzware teapot was a total find at $10.  It will be added to my collection.  I’ll post about that later.

There is one thing that I came home with that isn’t pictured.  A mid-century Lane cubist credenza.  I found it early in the day.  I hesitated about buying it.  Why?  Mainly because it looked heavy.  Yep, this is the way my mind works sometimes.  It looked heavy, and I knew that if I bought it I’d be moving it around a bit.  Into the truck, out of the truck, into the garage to store, into a better spot for painting, into another spot to take after pics … you get the idea … I move furniture around A LOT.  But the price was right, $20!  And mid-century is SO hot right now.  Plus I knew it would be fantastic painted.  So I whipped out my $20 and bought it and asked if I could come pick it up at the end of the day.

Well … here’s what happened.  When we went back to load it up, there was a note taped on top.  Someone “really” wanted it and would pay “good money” if I would sell it to him.  Hmmmm.  Interesting.

We loaded it up (and as suspected, it is very heavy) and drove home.

I tried to do a little research and found that similar mid-century credenzas were selling for anywhere from $500 to $1,200 online.  But, I couldn’t find this exact style.  Also, the pieces on line were in good shape for those prices.  This one was really beat up.

I have since found the exact piece online, and here it is.

 I am sure that if there are any mid-century aficionados reading this, your little hearts are beating a little faster now knowing that I paid $20 for one of these.

In the end, I decided to pay it forward.  I’m not a mid-century expert.  I don’t have any mid-century dealers in my rolodex.  I suppose I could have put this on craigslist and sold it for more without doing anything to it at all, other than moving it around and taking pictures, but instead I texted the guy and said I would take $175 for it.

He wins, I win.  I make a tidy profit for nothing more than being the first person to spot this.

Does he wish he’d seen it first for $20?  I’m sure he does.  But is he thrilled he got it for $175, probably so.  Does the original seller wish he’d realized the worth and priced it higher than $20, I’m sure he does.  But is he happy he got rid of a heavy piece of furniture that he didn’t want to move again?  I’m sure he is.

Do I wish I’d asked for something closer to $300 or $400?  Maybe a little.  And to be honest, I was kind of looking forward to transforming this with paint.  But am I happy that I don’t have to move this heavy piece around and around, definitely.  And who can complain about making a little extra money in a span of less than 8 hours?

And thus, my brief flirtation with the cubist period comes to a close.  But you can bet I will snatch the next one up much more quickly, even if it does look a bit heavy!

Update on 5/28/14:  Just saw an ad on craigslist for this credenza asking $550 at a shop in Minneapolis.  Do I think it’s the same one I sold?  Yes, I do.  Does it sting a little that the buyer lied to me and said it was for his own home?  Yes, it does.  And it’s unfortunate because both the dealer and I could have benefited from making a connection.  When I find future mid century pieces, I won’t be calling this guy.