Junkin With My Man!

Today was a fun date day of junkin with my man! For the past couple of summers, Kevin and I have spent Saturday mornings hitting some local garage and estate sales and today was the first Saturday junkin date of 2011-even though it is no where near summer. It was a quick trip to a couple of sales and a local shop that I've been wanting to stop at for a while. We were home by 10:30 with a LOT of fun treasures.

He is just as excited with his finds as I was with mine! We didn't set the alarm, didn't make major plans...if we woke up in time to go, then we'd go. If not, then we wouldn't-no big thing. We woke up late, and I almost decided to stay home, but we went anyway. I figured since we only had 20 minutes to wait until it opened once we got there, that we'd be in the high thirties or forties (street numbers). We were surprisingly 18 & 19. Even more surprising...a lot of people with numbers ahead of us left and didn't make it back when they opened the doors! We only ended up with 8 people in line in front of us when the door opened!

I found some Fiesta, Riviera, Pyrex, aprons, vintage kitchenware, an old bench and an old suitcase. Kevin found some old swords. He LOVES swords and knives (pretty much all weapons). His brother is coming over tomorrow to look at them-he thinks he might want to buy them from Kevin. I found one of them online-it's worth $159-he paid $40. The other two, I'm not having much luck with finding out anything about them. I think they might be cadet swords-but I can't figure out how old they are, or if they are reproductions.

This is our haul from the first sale:

The second sale was in competition with a neighbor holding an impromptu yard sale-taking advantage of the free advertising from the estate sale next door! We actually thought the estate sale was the yard sale-when the men running the estate sale came over and said "Hey, the estate sale is that house, not this one." They didn't seem very happy with the yard sale couple.

It was a gorgeous house! Prices were wayyyy too high-but it was fun to go to the sale just to see the house inside and out. Here is a quick snap I took of the outside of the house...

The last place was less than 3 miles from my house. It was a little shop in a shopping strip that had gone out of business, but is now back in a different space in the same strip...confusing right? I drove by it every day for several months last summer-always wanting to stop, but kept forgetting...until it was too late and they were gone-out of business. Now that they are back-I decided to stop. I really didn't miss anything last year by not stopping...but at least now I know-right?

It was a fun junkin date day for me and Kevin, and since we've been home, we've been pulling electrical wires up through the floors in our new (soon to be) sun room-boy is that a LOT of work! Unfortunately, we found a BIG mistake our hired builders made...no wonder Mike Holmes gets so much business on Holmes on Holmes!! Geesh! What goes through the minds of builders who think they can get away with this kind of stuff?!?!? I sent the builder a text message with a photo attached-in less than 2 minutes he sent a reply: "I'll stop by on Monday." His usual response time is 2 days!

Here is the picture I sent him...all I said is, I want you to see this picture of what we found...a support post sawed in half with the broken saw blade still stuck in it-and only one nail to secure it...

I wonder how he's going to fix a support post that his son sawed in half and left the broken saw blade still in the cut line...and put only one nail in it to secure it...a post that has been there for 2 years and should have NEVER even been touched...hmmmmm....I imagine I'll have more to tell on Monday! We would have never found it if we weren't running wire today...

I'm being summoned to pull more wires (darn! I thought we were done!), I will go for now...hope you had a fun day today!

A New Project!

For over a year now, I've been wanting to try a project that I first read about on a blog called "My Repurposed Life". I've picked up a few headboards and foot boards here and there over the past year, and ended up giving one away to someone who needed one for their daughter, one is out in the barn (not sure that it's the right type for this project) and another one that I just picked up today at a local consignment shop.

The first one was free, the second was $4, and the last one was 75% off so it was $10. It was a little higher than I would have liked to have spent (I'm sure you've figured out by now how cheap I am!), but it was one of those things that kept popping up in my head. You see, I actually saw it yesterday on a quick trip to the local consignment shop. I saw that it was 75% off, but thought it was still too high. I kept thinking about it all night and then this morning  I talked Kevin into going with me to take a look at it.

Since he's going to be doing the woodworking part, he needed to make the decision. We bought it and brought it home, and now he's out in the barn working his magic. He's been dying for a fun project for a while now. If it turns out, how I hope it will turn out, we will put it in the booth and see what happens. Hopefully we will have a chance to make and sell a bunch of them!

Here's a before shot...