Thrifty Thursday

I decided to start spotlighting my thrift store treasures and garage sale finds. I don't get to shop them much in the winter, so right now I'll focus on previous treasures. Yes, I always find a treasure or two. And some even have a background story.

Here is one of my first purchases, and probably the favorite.

The Background Story

(I thought about using the initials BS in the future, but wasn't sure if you'd believe the stories!)

Seven years ago my husband noticed a garage sale ad in the local paper and drove over there. He was a day early because he didn't actually look at the dates. My husband is very friendly, talkative, and outgoing, and spoke with the woman for close to an hour before heading home. During their conversation he volunteered our services, and promised we would be at their farm the next morning at 6 am to help carry furniture out of their house and barn.

At the time we had been dating about a year and it was going to be the first weekend in months that I wasn't working. I'm not a late sleeper but I was really looking forward to not getting up early in the morning. And I lived a lot farther from this garage sale than he did!

We both showed up at their house at 6 am. No one was outside. We knocked on the door a few times and eventually woke them up. Their power had gone out during the lightening storm the night before so their alarm never rang. The men went out to the barn and she and I chatted over coffee, then got to work drying off tables and setting up for the sale.

As the men were carrying out furniture and farm tools, I saw this dresser. It was painted a hideous blue, but I knew I wanted it, and asked her the price. She was surprised, because she didn't care for it, but told me it would be free since we were helping them. I gave her some money anyway, because we weren't helping them in order to get free furniture.





You can still see the old blue paint if you look closely at the grain of the wood around some of the details. It took me three weeks to remove the paint and thoroughly clean the dresser, but it was worth every minute. It is in our living room, with the TV and VCR on top and all the movies and Wii games in the drawers.