Garage sale finds, Craigslist bargain and Labor Day weekend!



my garage sale haul from Saturday!



monkeys, Halloween stickers, an "Early Man" book

sports themed wrapping paper, 2 boxes of glass jars, huge roll of twine, scary Halloween skull

I heart this dresser (my bargain of the day!!!)

a heavy duty dolly

Garage sales are a hit or miss thing. Some days you find carloads, some days you come home empty handed. That is what I love about them! It's all about the hunt. We (my mom and I -- we garage sale together every Saturday morning) weren't sure what to expect this Saturday because it was a holiday weekend. There were a decent amount of sales advertised, so we set off a little before 8am to check them out. It actually turned out to be a great "saling" day and we ended up buying quite a bit. At one of the first sales we hit I scored that realistic looking Halloween skull for $2, and (after a call to Joe to confirm that he needed/wanted one) that heavy duty dolly for $20 (similar dollies retail for over $100 at Home Depot)! Joe needs a dolly to help him move all of the furniture I buy at garage sales :) I purchased the monkeys (decorations for Jake's upcoming monkey-themed birthday party!), big roll of twine (I use twine for tons of things and go through it quickly!) and Halloween stickers at another garage sale for a total of $5. The boxes of small mason jars are also going to be used at Jake's party, and they were 25 cents each, so I bought 20 ($5 worth). The wrapping paper came from the same sale and was 50 cents, and they gave me the "Early Man" book for free (which will be used as a Halloween decoration!) The best deal of the day was this adorable dresser I scored! I will use it in our guest room now and as a dresser/changing table in the future for our next Baby Balice. It is in good condition and I love the pale green color and of course the chipping paint just adds character! All it needs is a good cleaning and new handles! Ready for the price? $5!!! Isn't that amazing? I think it's hilarious that I paid 4 times as much for the dolly than the dresser! So my grand total for the day was: $37.50. That is actually on the higher end of what I typically spend, but the dolly will definitely come in handy for any future furniture moving needs! Actually, we have already used the dolly to help move our old entertainment armoire into the garage...which brings me to my next topic: my recent Craigslist bargain!

our old "entertainment" armoire

We purchased the armoire in the above photo when we bought our house 4 years ago. We needed a tall cabinet to hide the existing hole in the wall that the previous owner had left behind for us! Yes, you heard that right, a HOLE! They had cut a hole in the wall for their small TV (the hole only fits a 20-something inch TV or so!) The wall backs up to the closet under the stairs so that is where the other side of the hole is - every time you open the closet door you see this square hole in the wall! These were the same people that took the light bulbs and shower curtains with them when they moved out! Classy. Anyway, we used this armoire to house our TV and TV accessories. It worked out great until recently. This armoire was not made as an entertainment cabinet, so the cabinet doors do not slide in. This means that we had to have the doors open while watching TV. No big deal, right? Wrong. Our little man is getting so tall that he was very close to hitting his head on these open doors every time he walked ran by. So...my Dad and Joe took the upper doors off the armoire. And it looked awful! The wood was a different color where the hinges used to be, and it just looked really bad. Of course I was glad that Jakey wouldn't have the chance to hurt himself on it now, but very unhappy with the look of the door-less armoire. So I started my Craigslist (CL) search for a new entertainment cabinet. I admit that I am a garage sale junkie, but I do not have the same affinity for CL. I only search the CL ads when I am looking for something specific. And this time I was. I was looking for a shorter, wider cabinet that we could place our TV on top of. We have always wanted to purchase a larger TV and one drawback to the armoire was that it could only hold up to a 32" TV. We knew that when we decided to buy a larger TV we would need to purchase a different piece of furniture for it. Little did we know that the new piece of furniture would be in place before we bought the bigger TV! Leave it to CL to have exactly what I was looking for the first time I looked! I took one look at the CL photo, and thought it would be perfect for us...so I emailed the seller to ask about the dimensions and if it was still available. Luckily, it was! And it would take up almost the entire width of our wall, but it would fit! Yay! And the best part? The price....

our new entertainment cabinet!

Now that you've seen what it looks like, how much do you think we paid? If you guessed less than the total of my garage sale purchases from Saturday, you'd be right! $35 for this piece. No joke. However, our truck resources were not available when we needed them, so we had to rent a truck from Home Depot to get this large piece of furniture home. The truck rental cost us more than the furniture did (about $40)! But for a grand total of $75 to get the furniture to our house I'd say it was worth it! Isn't it beautiful?!? Our Blu-ray player, TiVo box and Xbox fit nicely behind the glass, and that leaves us with 3 drawers and a large cabinet for tons of storage. There is only one problem:




Our TV looks tiny on top of this huge piece of furniture! And it doesn't cover up the hole in the wall. (My dad has since cut a thin piece of wood that my mom painted the same color as our wall to help hide the hole and this photo was taken after they nailed this piece of wood in place. If you look closely, you can see the edge of this piece of wood on the left side of the TV - right next to Millie from Team Umizoomi!) So...what to do, what to do? Well...we ended up taking advantage of the Labor Day sales this weekend and bought a larger TV! We got a great deal from Costco.com and with the sale price and free shipping we just couldn't resist! The best part is that this piece of furniture is the perfect height so we can place the new TV on top of the cabinet and will not have to deal with the hassle and expense of mounting the new TV on the wall! Yay! So I guess my great CL deal turned out to be much more expensive than we thought, if you count the new TV. But we have been wanting one for several years, and waiting for the price to come down. The new cabinet and the Labor Day sales were the perfect storm and we will now be receiving our ginormous TV in 7-10 days. Woohoo! And now we are trying to sell our old armoire on CL which is turning out to be a little harder than we thought. Guess no one needs an entertainment armoire anymore because everyone else already has ginormous TVs that are mounted on the wall! So we will try Plan B and market it as an armoire for clothing and/or extra storage. I'll keep you posted on how that turns out and I will post more pics as soon as we get our new TV!

 A few new pics of Jakey "driving" the rental truck and goofing around with Pa Pa:

Hope you all had a fabulous Labor Day weekend! We spent the long weekend doing projects around the house (mostly moving furniture around!), spent lots of time with family, and ate and ate and ate. It was a great way to end the summer season. Up next: project birthday! Our little man turns 2 in 16 days!!!!!