Category: garage sales.

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.

As much as I enjoy visiting with my mom and sister and the warmth and sunshine in Vegas this time of year, there just is no way I could ever live there.  The garage sale scene is just entirely too dismal.

It’s not that there aren’t any around, there seem to be plenty, but the selection of items for sale is pretty pathetic.  I have a theory about this, I believe that probably 80% (unscientific guesstimate) of the people living in Vegas moved there in the last 20 years.  They moved into a brand new houses and I’m also guessing that many of them bought all new furniture when they did so.  In other words, there is a lot of bad 90’s furniture in Vegas garage sales.

I am a die hard garage saler.  I’ve been to a LOT of garage sales, so I know to expect some junk.  But usually you find at least one or two cool vintage items, even if they aren’t something that you want.  My sister and I went to probably about a dozen sales, and out of those there was only one that was even slightly decent.

All of that floral china is no longer my cup of tea, but at least it wasn’t cast off free coffee mugs from the casino.  This gentleman also had some very lovely paintings.  And in fact, I did buy a small one that would fit into my suitcase (more on that in another post).

Other than that, the only thing I purchased was a John Sanford book to read on the plane for 75 cents.

To round out our thrifty morning, we also stopped at the local Goodwill and Salvation Army stores.  Again, nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  More bad 90’s furniture and tacky casino freebies.  My sister did find a lovely blue carnival glass bowl (she collects it) that was tempting, but it was priced at $18.99.  Not exactly an amazing bargain.  Plus she was worried about getting it home in one piece.

None the less, it was lovely being out in the Vegas sunshine and scouting for garage sale signs.  My sister was a good sport and played along.  It just whetted my appetite for garage sale season in Minnesota, which is probably still more than a month away.  Sigh.