Thrifting Thursday:Chair Twins

Posted on August 17, 2012 by April

In this installment of Thrifting Thursday on a Friday(click here for the first thrift-centric post), I wanted to brag about a pair of handsome chairs I scored at my local Goodwill. I won’t lie, I purchased these chairs last summer, as in almost a year ago. And sadly, I have done nothing with them except shampoo the dickens out of them. But I have tried them “on” in just about every room in the house. I still have no idea where to put these beauts, maybe I just need to take the plunge and finally change them up into something I really love. Oh yeah, you probably want to see what I’ve been jabbering on about. Here are the twins:

Please ignore the dirty grey floors, these were taken in my sunroom which is patiently awaiting a makeover. Alongwith the rest of the house.

I love their shape, and their size, they are compact but big enough to hold a large-ish girl like myself. Granted, they aren’t the type of chairs you really want to curl up in and read War and Peace. They seem to have a slight whoopie cushion quality to them, but minus the rude sound. And were pretty dirty when I brought them home from Goodwill.

See…

Yeah, that dark stuff on the back of the chair is not a shadow, it’s dirt. I suspect these guys lived in a garage for a while before finally being donated, or something died on them (eek). So, I pulled out my trusty shampooer and shampooed the daylights out of these little guys. Most of the dirt came out and they smell a lot better now. But after a year of holding on to these little chairs, I’m still not sure what I want to do with them. I originally wanted to paint or re-stain the exposed wood frame, and then reupholster them in a modern fabric. Sorta like this:

Source was Pinterest, which was originally pinned by another user from a Craigslist posting. Sorry, I tried to find a better and more linkable example but this one was too perfect.

The current upholstery is a floral velour that has seen better days, the print is pretty and I am sure the fabric was nice when it was new in 1971, but I’m still not sold on it. Since the current upholstery is kind of shedding and isn’t quite my cup of tea, I played around with some upholstery fabric I had laying around.

I love the boldness, but it may be too bold and too much of a statement to be able to be used in other rooms. I’ve got some white upholstery grade fabric that might work well, but with two dogs in the house that shed and get on the furniture, I’m a bit hesitant to use it. Any piece in my house needs to be able to take a beating, and tolerate two shedding dogs.

So after a year, I’m still stuck on what to do with these guys. Maybe they just aren’t my style at all, or maybe the whoopie cushion-ness of them makes them too uncomfortable for me to even want to keep them. But since they were so cheap, 9.99 each, the cheapskate in me doesn’t want to let them go. The Nester preaches against having fear when it comes to decorating or even re-doing furniture. Afterall, she states that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Oh, how right she is, maybe I will finally take the plunge and do something creative with my chair twins.

What would you do if you had these chair twins in your possession? Would you reupholster them? Paint them? Or simply clean them up and enjoy their vintage quality?

Thrifting Thursday

Posted on August 9, 2012 by April

In my last post I talked about the happenings of the weekend and shared this photo:

With today being Thursday, which sort of rhymes with thrifting, I thought I’d finally share with you, my vintage loving trash to treasure making friends, my thrifting bounty. I have toyed with the idea of making this a weekly series, in which I’d share all the great treasures I’ve found and added to my hoard or have simply found blog worthy. This series will be titled Thrifting Thursdays, original right? I’m sure there aren’t a zillion blogs out there with that exact blog series.

Anywho, for those of you who are unaware of what thrifting is, here is a definition according to Wikipedia:

Thrifting refers to the act of shopping at a thrift store, flea market, garage sale, or a shop of a charitable organization, usually with the intent of finding interesting items at a cheap price.

Now that we have established that I enjoy buying items at a cheap price, let’s move on to the eye candy shall we?

First off, I’ll talk about the newest additions to my owl hoard.

These little owls were a bit of splurge. The matching set was sold as separate pieces, at $3 each that brings the total investment to $9. But I just couldn’t leave them, that coffee owl makes me very happy, his wing holds a spoon. I think I will let him hold my peppermint tea bags, and just add a cute little spoon for fun. The salt and pepper shakers will probably be just for looks. Alongwith all the other S/P shakers I bought and have no idea what to do with. And those three owl trivets, they were .69 each. And I’ll actually use them! Nothing makes me happier than buying something cute and useful!! And that little owl there in front of the big guys, he’s a momento from someone’s vacation to New Orleans. I have no connection to New Orleans, nor have I ever visited, but he was just so darn cute, and only .99. It may be time to seek help for this owl addiction.

I also picked up these pretty amber tumblers, I loved the texture of them. And they aren’t huge, just right for a glass of lemonade. You might notice what those tumblers are sitting in…

A rustic dough bowl, I know it sort of looks odd, but they can be dressed up to be totally awesome. Stay tuned on a post dedicated to making dough bowls pretty, aren’t you excited?

This particular dough bowl is basically a hallowed out log, unless I’m completely wrong in calling this item a dough bowl and it’s actually meant to be used as a latrine, in which case I may need to remove it from my dining table. Either way, I love it, especially for 3.99!

This pretty little blue cake plate is also part of my hoard now, I thought it would be nice the next time I bring brownies to the office.

And I can use these cute nesting goose measuring cups when I do make those brownies. After they’ve been cleaned up of course.

My most favorite items found this weekend are these quirky necklaces. I wore the lion the other day. He’s huge at 3 inches long and nearly that wide, definitely a statement piece.

People either hated it or loved it, I love it.

Here I am awkwardly modeling the bow necklace. Excuse the quality, I attempted a self portrait with poor lighting and shaky hands. Next time I’ll have to use a tripod and a remote. But you get the idea of what this little bow is supposed to look like.

Goodness, I need to slow down on the old stuff shopping or get a bigger house, because honestly I’m running out of room for all of my pretties.

Have you bought or “shopped” for anything on the side of the road that turned out really awesome?

Scenes from the weekend

Posted on August 6, 2012 by April

At the end of this Monday, I thought I’d unwind a bit by re-living some scenes from the weekend.

All of my weekends include thrifting, apparently it’s become a big part of my life. What once was something I indulged in once a month has become a once week occurance, sometimes more. I should never have introduced my Bubba to this addictive past time, he’s become much more into it that I ever was. Although, you’d think I was the thrifting nut judging by my newest hoard. I’ll tell you more about some of those finds in a later post. Or when the crew of Hoarders comes to pay me a visit.