Thrift Share Tuesday- September 25

Sorry for the delay.  My old, old (9 years old) camera  decided it didn't want to share it's pictures anymore, and wouldn't download, so I had to run out and buy a new one this morning.  It's really about time, I've been struggling too long with my last two cameras, since my 4 year old camera went kaput sometime last year.  It worked, but didn't work.  So yay, I'm excited to see how this new one works out, and if it improves my photos in anyway.  Let's see.  

If you follow me on Facebook you might have seen a tease about an item I bought at an estate sale on Friday, that has sold on Ebay for $1,000.  This has been my biggest "thrifted" purchase to date in size and cost.

A few weeks back I saw, on another blog, a Danish teak folding desk that was awesome. So when I saw pictures of and estate sale and saw something that looked similar I was ready to buy.  When we went to the sale I told my mom if it's $300 I'll get it, but I figured it would be much more expensive.  Then after waiting in line for about 30 minutes, with a sales tab already running from items in the garage, we were inside.  I bee line to the kitchen, as usual, and end up in the living room where I find my mom standing guard by the folding desk, with a price less than my top price. UGH, this is usually not how this goes.  Most of the time the item is 2-5 times more than what I want to spend.  I look at it, intimidated by it (because I really didn't expect it to be less) and walk away. 

Yes...I walked away.

Then a few minutes I'm back, ask if they would take a little less (estate sales usually don't go down on prices the first day), and they said yes.  Oh hell!  Ok. It's mine, and here it is.

A vintage, Danish, teak, mini-office/folding desk.  

Magazine rack on the bottom left, and it has a large drawer just under the desk.

I really need to get a smaller car so that I'm deterred from buying large items, because the second it got into my car I started to second guess myself.  What did I just do?  It's really nice, this would be an awesome craft area, but would I be able to sell it?   My mom knows I'm second guessing myself and asked me to go online to reference the one APG had on her other blog, MOD Sonoma.  OMG!  It looks to be the exact same one and she had sold hers for $625.   I'm happy again, and even more happier later when I look on Ebay and see that one sold for $1,000, and the one on Ebay is exactly like the one I have.  I even have the key to lock it. 

It all folds up to just under 4 feet tall, and 2 1/2" wide. 

I think I'm just going to keep it for a little while since it's so neat, but it's also very tempting to list it and see if I could get 1k for it too.  We'll see.

So here are my other finds from this last week.

A Merry Mushroom spice rack set.

An Aladdin lunch set, with two insulated bottles, a lunch box with 4 nesting cups/bowls,  all packed up in a cowhide case.

Some Pyrex.  Such a pretty blue.
 

Look at the glass Butterfly Gold carafe, a great addition to my ever growing Butterfly Gold collection.

My mom spotted this item.  A vintage General Electric toaster.  I'm not sure how old this is (possibly early 80's), but it looks great.  Our toaster died recently, and we bought a new one that arrived dead, but this one works.  Even better it matches our kitchen and at $3 it was a steal.   I've eaten toast every morning since we bought it. 



And she also bought this, a flip desk calendar with thermostat.  Yeah, weird the center piece is a thermostat, that works.  The calendar part is pretty cool too.  You flip the little rectangle piece and the numbers change.  The only info I have on this is the thermostat if Florn, and it was purchased at a jewelers "Nat Jewelers" in NJ (sticker under the piece). 



Yay, got this done and out of the way.  Time to start taking pictures to list items on Etsy. 

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Half A$$ Refinishing

Hi...yup I half a$$ed a project.  Gasp! Super shock I know.  It's a surprise I even got a project done. 

So, I've purchased a few less than great condition vintage items lately, but the items themselves are great.  Sometimes you have to look past the dirt, rust, just overall condition.  I've super cleaned some very bad looking Pyrex before with Easy Off Oven cleaner (shhh I'm not sure if this has been approved by the Pyrex world, but it worked for me).  I've cleaned up a vintage Cosco stool and sold it, and a rusted chrome bread box, sold it too.

Rust seems to give it's current owners the thought that the item is no good and they discard it for a couple of bucks.  Depending on the rust all you need is a little bit of elbow grease (very little, since I'm allergic to hard labor) then that $1 investment turns into a $30 profit, or just a piece of awesomeness for your home. 

Well, what I had here was not rust or baked on grease, but a really rough vintage end table. Fixing up wood furniture is not my thing.  I don't want to invest too much time by stripping then refinishing.  Maybe down the line with larger items when I could make a large profit, but not now.  I'll let you be the judge on how you think it turned out. 

Here is the vintage end table I bought a few weeks back. 

Some of the finish has flaked and worn off, and it had a big water stain on it,  but it was an awesome shape and from a reputable furniture company, Lane.  So I couldn't pass it up.  Stripping though wasn't much of a thought, and my mom suggested using a product she's used before Restor-a-finish.  So I took her up on her suggestion, but first I did have to do some sanding since the finish was flaking.  I used 0000 steel wool.

Yikes!  This got me a little worried, but once I started applying the Restor-a-finish it started to look much better.

So whatcha think?

I'll admit it's not perfect.  Some of it's imperfections did get a bit exaggerated, but I'm not a professional, however it does look soooo much better.  Um...right?  I'm in hopes someone else will thinks so too and maybe buy it.  Maybe they too will see it's potential and have the intentions of making it even better. I can only wait and see.

What half a--ed projects have you done lately?  :-)

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Thrift Share Monday - September 17

This last week I told myself I wasn't gonna go vintage hunting since I bought and spent sooo much last week.  I even refused to look up estate sales so I wouldn't be tempted,  however when vintage is placed right under your nose and is in your backyard (almost literally) it's hard to pass up.

Thursday there was an estate sale on the block right behind my house, and it was hard to ignore the bright green signs that led the way to the sale as I took my kids to school.  So what else can one do but follow the colored path.  My sister couldn't even pass it up, the signs lured her in too.  She got there just before I did. 

There wasn't a ton at this sale that caught my eye, and thankfully.  Here are the few things I purchased here.

My favorite find, this super awesome vintage 1950's Samsonite Ultralite suitcase.

This suit case is in phenomenal condition.

Now this vase I've found several times.  Um.... five to be exact.  I don't know what it is, but I really like this vase.  I guess one of the factors is I buy with the intent to sell, but then I don't want to sell  the one(s) I have so I buy another one (then another....and another) so that  I can sell it.  Am I going about this the wrong way?  Well even numbers of items is not the ideal way to display them....so this 6th one I have to sell.  That is unless I find a 7th before the 6th is sold.


Then there is Pyrex of course.


These are a first for me.  I haven't even ran into these small casserole/au gratin dishes online yet.  So I was kinda surprised when I saw Pyrex on the bottom of them.  The sad thing is these were found in the back yard shed.  Why would someone have Pyrex discarded like that?  *sniff*

As I was checking out I grabbed this really neat vintage necklace.  It's 5 strands and 47" long.  I can see this being a very nice everyday casual piece, and an awesome evening out piece.  See the the listing in my Etsy shop. 

On Saturday I was selling at the Austin Flea again, this being my 4th time.  This event has not let me down yet.  So consistent and the best part is it's inside a restaurant so I can order food and drink while I sell.  Manue of PrettyKiku kindly took this picture of my booth set up (yup that's me sitting in the back...I wasn't sure she was getting me in the picture).



Oh...so on my way to the Austin Flea I had to stop by an estate sale.  It's hard to ignore emails about a sale that's on my way to where I'm going.  (I'm soo weak).  This sale wasn't packed with vintage...or much of anything that really interested me, however I did grab a really cool item.

I had just bumped into this online about two weeks ago.  If I hadn't I would have had no idea what it was or even be interested in it.  It's a Chemex coffee pot.  I did some research on it and found this really interesting story about the creator.  Apparently this is an awesome coffee pot.  The way I read it was (now if any of you are Breaking Bad fans then you'll understand)  that Mr. Schlumbohm, the creator, was the Gale of his time.

Initially I guessed this might have been Pyrex, but there are no maker marks on this piece.  Sooooo if I can't determine it's vintage then I'll keep it.  Why not, online they sell (new) for $35-$43 OR if this is hand blown then its $72-$111.  Man!  So if I can't be rich at least I can pretend by surrounding myself with expensive stuff I bought super cheap.  Right? 

Then I grabbed these other items.

A 1960s Pyrex casserole dish



and these cute cherry Anchor Hocking juice glasses.



That's it for my haul.   How has your thrifting been lately?

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Meet Ralph - My daughters messenger bag

So a few weeks (maybe 6 weeks....yikes) back I posted on Facebook a drawing of a messenger bag that my daughter wanted me to make.  

Well, as I predicted I would procrastinate, and during that procrastination her creation evolved (too much Pokemon, I guess), and became this, via her laptop paint software.

and then this.

Oh no!   *Note to self - Work as fast as you can based on the original draft, because the evolved version gets much more detailed. 

So after much procrastination, and constant questioning regarding "Where is Ralph?" (what she named her creature) the day before the first day of school I started the bag,

BUT our water heater had other plans for our day and decided to bust and soak our hoarders garage.  So the rest of that day I spent going through wet boxes.  Oh what fun!!!

That next week I slowly got around to working on Ralph.  I'll admit, initially, I was very happy with the start of the bag.  This is only my 2nd attempt at appliqué (my first time was on this purse), and I'll shamefully say the first thought to mind was how can I quickly get his face done?  Felt and glue?  Well, I'm glad I didn't go that route.  :-) Um...err...well I did use fusible fleece for the eye spots....and they are already coming off.  Blah!



However,  I am a bit disappointed on the final construction of him.  I measured....and measured and measured and it looked like it would fit together correctly, and it would if it wasn't for the flap.  I normally don't work with flaps.  I didn't once think to put into consideration the flap strap situation.  I think the flap should have been slightly smaller or the body of the bag should of been larger to accommodate the strap, because if I sewed the strap to the inside like I would  normally, with a purse/tote, the flap and strap would have overlapped some weird way, therefore the strap had to be sewn to the exterior of the bag, which now leaves the flap to awkwardly fold/bunch at the strap.  Arrrgghhh!!!

See where the flap bunches at the top by the strap?

*Sigh* Oh well.  I've learned a lesson, and thankfully I was somewhat able to figure out the situation just prior to me melting down and throwing in the towel.  It's not perfect, but my daughter LOVES him, and that's what counts....right?  It's pretty close, right?  She did want a tail....but then this would never get done.

She was even excited about the pen holder feature. 

Pen pockets.

Yay!  At least I got this off my list.  Now onto the procrastination on figuring out how to make a camel water bag backpack for the kids dad.  He's asked me to make one months ago.  What do I look like a custom shop/personal seamstress?  I have all the supplies though....it's just getting to that point to construct it is what's holding me back now.  Has anyone seen any tutorials or patterns on making one?  I've looked with no luck.  :-/

Oh, as for the name of the messenger bag, Ralph, well it's just a name she pulled from out of the air.  She has a purse with a squirrel on it and his name is Bob.  I don't think I've ever known a Ralph or Bob. 

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Thrift Share September 10 ...Continues

Yesterday I started off with some of my thrifted finds from last week.  Like I said I bought a LOT of stuff.  So instead of overloading you with a never ending post I decided to split it up into two....or maybe three.  Lets see.

Ok...where to begin.  Oh!  I want to cry on your shoulder first, and share with you what I had to leave behind at a fourth stop.  I went to a sale purely to look at this one item....maybe with the hopes that it would be inexpensive.  I've seen typewriters priced anywhere from $8-$75 at estate sales.....so I had silly hopes.

Isn't it gorgeous?  Well it was $350...so I had to sadly leave it for someone with deeper pockets.  *sigh*
Back to our third stop on Friday, it was an estate sale that was packed.  No furniture just tables and tables of knick knacks, doo-dads, and kitchen items.  FILLED!  And I think kitchen items are my weakness.  I don't know why since I don't spend too much time in the kitchen (well, I spend more time washing my thrifted finds then anything else).  I do cook, but not all the time....maybe twice a week....ok....maybe once.  Sometimes there is that rare line up of planets, and I'll cook three times a week, but we all know the planets don't line up that often.  

So I went this estate sale on Sunday too, for 50% off day so here are my combined purchases from both days.

I'm gonna start off with the greatest find.  That my MOM, yes, once again spotted that I overlooked.  I even looked at this item, but didn't even realized what it did.  So I passed it by.

A Versa-Table.

I've seen and purchased kitchen utility carts, here and at just before this sale here.  However, when I saw this one I didn't realize it was a kitchen/entertainment cart.  Why?  Because it was half folded, up against a wall.  It was my mom who called it to my attention when she unfolded the whole thing to show to me.  WHAT?!!!  It FOLDS up!!!

How cool is that?  My mom was just telling me when I purchased the crunchy cart earlier that day that I should take it as a display piece to the markets I do (or will be doing), but my reply was that the cart would take up too much space in my car, and it wasn't practical.  Well....well....well....she solved that problem, right?  It was a whopping $28. 

Alright, onward...

I got Pyrex crazy at this sale and purchased these Pyrex pieces.







A 57 piece Blue Band mixed Pyrex and Anchor Hocking set. 







A milk glass pitcher.  I love this piece soooo much, the flowers are such great colors.

I also got coffee pot happy at this sale.  How cute are these "His" and "Hers" coffee carafes?



And then look at these two cool coffee pots.  The pink one is a percolator from the 1950s with 22k gold decorated design, as I found here.  Fancy!



Two large vases(?).  What are these called?  Matchbook holders?(haha)  My grandparents had a large green one similar to these and it was filled with matchbooks.  But really, aside from serving margaritas to my mom what are these for?  Anyone?



A Thermos ice bucket.  (Yes mom....you got me hooked on buying ice buckets.  Don't laugh....remember I "hoard" where you reside.)

 And then a whole bunch of ceramic planters/pots.  Why?  I don't know.



Now, I got to find a place to put all this stuff aside from where they are, the dinning table.



My storage shelves in the garage are already filled.  Yikes!!  Keep your fingers crossed for me that I make a big dent in my vintage goods this weekend while I sell at the Austin Flea. 

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Thrift Share Monday - September 10

Ugh...Barf!  I was bad this weekend.  Like real real bad.

I bought too much....like a lot, a lot.  Why is that bad?  Well, because I'm very very slow at listing things on Etsy.

I don't know how I'm gonna do this post.  I may have to break it down into several post...even though I know I could be notorious for having long posts.   I'm just gonna start and see how out of control this gets.

The thrift stores weren't as plentiful as they were the week before, but I did score one really cool item.  Thank you mom for spotting this.

A super cute vintage iron....in working condition.  I'm keeping this. 

On Friday we started off at a garage sale, and I was really please with my finds.

I first eyed a rough looking stand/shelf, something great for a craft display, and if folds flat.

A 1950s Cosco step stool.  It's a little rough but it will clean up nicely.

A really.....really rough kitchen utility cart.

The chrome is in fantastic condition, the trays I'll sand and repaint.  As for the wheels...they are on their last leg, but you know what?  Last weekend I bought 4 wheels at a random stop, just because I knew what the wheels belonged to, since a few weeks back I found a wheel to another cart I have, and you never know when you'll need more wheels.   Just buy it, and the rest will come.  ;-)

Left photo is what the currently wheels look like on the cart, breaking.  The right picture are the wheels I found last week.

And then look at this fantastic double goose-neck desk lamp.

When I was looking at the lamp the garage sale host said it was his military desk lamp.  How cool is that?   It works and is currently listed in my Etsy shop. 

Our next stop was a living estate sale, but it was somewhere along the lines of a garage sale/antique dealer liquidation.  The host was handling the sale for her daughter who just sold the house, and the host was a former antique dealer trying to get rid of odds and ends she still hand on hand.  So here is what I grabbed there.

These vintage ceramic planters.

A cast iron owl letter holder.

And these super super cute 1940's salt and pepper shakers, currently listed on Etsy. 



Hmmmm.... should I stop here?  Probably so.  The next sale is where I did the most damage....times two, since I went back for 50% of Sunday.  Yikes!!!

Sooo, check back tomorrow to see part two of Thrift Share Monday, which includes Pyrex, a super cool folding utility cart, and a super cute "His" and "Hers" coffee carafe pair. 

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