Category: the carriage house.

OK, I have to admit, I am not the greatest housekeeper.

Our house is tidy most of the time, but it’s not always especially clean.  I’m just not a big fan of cleaning.  I’m also not a huge fan of cooking, or doing laundry.

But I am a fan of vintage housekeeping items, and we have some fun ones for our upcoming Carriage House Sale.

Maybe cleaning would be more enjoyable if I had a cool box to keep my supplies handy.

LOL, well, probably not, but those cleaning supplies would look snazzy in my pantry.

Remember my large non-collection of whisk brooms?  After realizing that I’m probably never going to get around to making a whisk broom wreath, I priced them up for the sale.  Ironically, Sue also brought over a bunch of them.

So, yeah, we have a large supply of vintage whisk brooms available.  If they don’t sell I may have to revisit that wreath idea.  That bucket is for sale as well.  I added a segment from the I.O.D. Label Ephemera transfer to it.

We also have a small sampling of enamelware for sale.

You may remember that pot in the middle that I added an I.O.D. transfer to.

I purchased the pot at an estate sale earlier this year, and I really intended to keep it for myself.  But as it turned out, I couldn’t find a good spot to display it in my house so I decided to part with it.

We have a fun selection of vintage linens at the sale as well.

Sue has quite a few pairs of embroidered pillowcases.

As well as this charming foldable laundry bin.

We also have a couple of quilts, and some lovely vintage tablecloths.

I also created an ironing board laundry sign.

My neighbor nnK found this ironing board free at the curb for me.

It was a bit worse for the wear with a couple of serious burn marks.  In addition, the metal legs that held it up were no longer stable.  So with my handyman Ken’s help, I removed the legs completely.  Then I added a couple of coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth paint.  Next up I added a floral section from the I.O.D. Lattice Rose paint inlay, and then the wording from the Laundry transfer from re.design with prima.

I followed it all up with a couple of coats of matte spray sealer.

I’ve added some D rings on the back so you could hang this sign on the wall, but you could also just lean it against the wall if you don’t have quite that much wall space in your laundry area.

So, how about you?  Are you a fan of housekeeping?  Or maybe just a fan of vintage housekeeping supplies?  Leave a comment and let me know.

And for those of you who are local, I hope you’ll be able to swing by this week!

I will be posting my address and other details about the sale on Wednesday morning, so be sure to stay tuned.

Any ironstone fans out there?

‘Cuz we’ve got some at the Carriage House Sale.

We have more than a dozen pitchers ranging in size from small to medium (sorry, no really large ones).

And ranging in price from $3 to $12.

We’ve got some gravy boats for a mere $4 each.

We’ve also got some chamber pots for $15 each.

We also have a whole bunch of these little guys …

Were they originally used for syrup?  I’m not sure, but they seem the right size for that.

But personally, I like the idea of displaying them en masse in a bowl.

And at only $3 to $4 each, you could easily buy them all … and the blue bowl to go with them!

This pretty pitcher is marked at $12, but I keep debating whether or not to keep it.  It makes such a pretty vase.

But for now it has a tag on it.

As a reminder, the Carriage House Sale has been rescheduled to next week due to the potential for severe weather that is predicted for both today and tomorrow.

If you’re local, I hope to see you there!

For me, one of the more stressful parts of having an occasional sale in the carriage house is worrying about the weather.

Will it be too hot?  Will it be humid and sticky?  Will it rain?  Or even worse, will we have severe weather?  We did have a sale once when the severe weather sirens were going off, I really don’t want to repeat that experience.

For that reason, we’ve decided to postpone the Carriage House Sale to next week.

Apparently I should have had a sale last year when we were in a drought and barely had any rainy days all summer, because this year is turning out to be quite the opposite.

It has been awesome for the garden.

But not so awesome for having a sale.

The forecast for this week?  Yesterday, severe thunderstorms and rain.  Today, evening storms. Wednesday, storms possible.  Thursday, rain all day.  Friday, more storms.  Saturday, even more storms.

It’s almost comical.  There is wet, stormy weather predicted for this entire week.  I really feel like mother nature is trying to tell me something.

In the past our merchandise has typically sprawled out from the carriage house.

As you may know, I have plenty of room for sprawling.

But sprawling isn’t really possible in severe weather, or even in simple rain.

So, I apologize for throwing a curve ball at those of you who were planning to be at the sale this week.  Hopefully you can make it next week instead, and fingers crossed that the weather will be better by then!

Over this past week I’ve been working super hard to get the carriage house ready for my upcoming sale.  I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I don’t think I’ve done much cleaning out there since my last sale … 8 years ago!

You should have seen the cobwebs.  Yikes!

Luckily I had some help from Sue, my Carriage House Sale partner.

Now that the cleaning is done, it’s time to start making sure all of my items have price tags and so forth.

As I’m going along, I thought I’d share some of my available merch with you guys starting with the big stuff like this cedar lined trunk.

You may remember that I painted it last summer.  I’d been really remiss about posting it online to sell, and once I’d decided to go back to having my own sale I thought I may as well just hang onto it until then.

I also have this washstand available.

These make excellent nightstands.  We have one like it on Mr. Q’s side of the bed.

I will also have this vintage farmhouse table available.

As well as that pair of white chairs.

I’ve also priced up the topless dresser that I picked up last summer.

I never did get around to figuring out a top for it, and I think it’s time to admit that I probably never will.  So I’m pricing it low and hoping someone else will take it on as a project.  It would be perfect for turning into a bathroom vanity, don’t you think?

I’ve also got a price tag on the rooster cupboard, although I have to admit I am hesitating to sell it.

For one thing, I still kind of love it, I just don’t have anywhere to put it right now.  For another, it is losing paint right and left.  The milk paint is chipping to beat the band.  I originally sealed the piece with Miss Mustard Seed antiquing wax, but it would probably benefit from another coat of wax.

So, anyway.  It’s out in the carriage house with a price tag on it, so if it goes, it goes.  And if it doesn’t, then I’m meant to keep it, right?

I also have lots of signage available for sale including the Garden Herbs sign I painted up a while back.

And several of the signs I painted up for Christmas last year, like this one …

and this one …

The Garden Herbs tote will be available …

as will several other wooden or metal totes.

I have a few painted buckets.

And of course, several tackle/tool boxes.

And don’t forget that flora parisiensis suitcase …

and the sweet flour sifter painted in Dixie Belle’s Cottage Door.

I’ll have this trio of French pitchers …

and a couple of French flower buckets too.

And don’t forget that gorgeous black watering can.

OK, you get the idea.  Lots of the projects that I’ve been sharing over the last 6 months or so will be making their way into my sale.  I hope some of you local (Twin Cities, MN) readers are planning to stop by!

Ever since I retired two years ago (well, technically two and a half, time flies!) I’ve been thinking about resuming the occasional sale that I used to hold here in my carriage house with my friend Sue.

We held sales here for years.  We started on a very small scale in the late 90’s, in fact it was really more of a garage sale in the very early days.  We kept at it until 2016.

But it really became too much for me to have a full time day job, plus the furniture painting (I was doing a lot more of that then) and blog writing, plus the sale twice a year (some years we even held three sales!).

In addition, my workshop is in the carriage house in the summer, so having a sale meant completely gutting my workshop and setting up the sale, and then once it was done, returning everything to working order in the workshop.

Not only was it a lot of work, but it also meant that my workshop was out of commission for 4 weeks or so for set up and take down (since I really only had time on weekends and evenings to work on it) …  twice per year.  And I can really only use my workshop from May through September, so that really cut into my workshop time.

The sale had also grown over the years.  By the end, we had the carriage house full, plus lots of stuff outside.

We had a couple of tents, but most of the stuff was out in the open which got a little dicey if the weather wasn’t good.

Like the time the tornado sirens went off just as we opened up!

We experimented with a few extra partners over the years, and with adding things like a bake sale.

The baked goods were fun, but I think I was their best customer!

We added perennials divided from our own gardens a few times too, with mixed results.

Back in 2016 I was doing a lot of furniture, and it was selling really well on Craigslist.  In contrast, furniture never did terribly well at my occasional sales.  So I decided to give up the Carriage House Sale.

I continued selling my furniture online, and I started selling my smalls at a shop on consignment.

But these days I’m not doing so much furniture, and although selling through a shop has worked out really well for me in the past, it has limitations.  Somehow over the past few years I’ve accumulated a fair amount of stuff that just wasn’t the right fit for the shop.

That led me to think that maybe I should resume my own occasional sale.

I’m a little bit nervous about it, it has been 8 years since my last last after all.  What if I’ve forgotten how to do it?

I reached out to my friend Sue, and she jumped on board.  She’s also retired now and has more time for hosting a sale.  I have to admit, I was relieved when she said yes because she always had great stuff!

Plus we have a very similar aesthetic.

So, the Carriage House Sale rides again.  We’re tentatively planning on having the sale on June 21 and 22 (or thereabouts), so you locals should mark your calendar!

Luckily I have a couple of months yet to pull together my ‘inventory’, and I’m sure you’ll see lots of projects here on the blog that will be earmarked for the sale (although, as always, if any of you locals are ever interested in a particular item when I post about it you are welcome to reach out ahead of the sale, just email me at qisforquandie@gmail.com).