Estate Sale Diary (Weekend Recap)

Good morning!!

Like I said earlier in the week, I'm back to check in with some reportage from the field. What field? The estate sale field, naturally. I realized the other day, talking to a friend, that while there are some crazy out-of-the-ordinary estate sales or Goodwill runs that stick out in my mind by sheer force of weirdness, I've been missing a great opportunity in not keeping some kind of a log of the selfsame. I want to get better about taking pictures and documenting the digging-- I yanked most of these from Estatesales.net, but I'll try to be a more diligent shutterbug in the future.

1) Knob Hill, Donelson:

One of my favorite sellers from Gallatin (you can see her shop on the square here) was running a sale in Donelson, and greeted me at the door. "Are you wearing your charm bracelet?" she called out. "YOU KNOW IT," I replied, both of us referring to the sterling silver charm bracelet Matthew had gone up to Sumner County to procure for me. Remind me to tell you more about that and my ensuing obsession with vintage charms in a later post. ;) As nervous as it makes me to run into people I know at the sales (because I have the inborn natural skittishness and self doubt of a feral cat), it kind of also make me happy to see my peeps. In we went.

This house was gor-GEOUS. Five bedrooms and a kitchen like something out of a Franco Zefferelli Shakespeare movie, with a big brick hearth outfitted with grill, cooktop, double oven, and who knows what else all in one gorgeous Tudor package. I was knocked back by visions of hanging garlic and copper bottom pans and whatever else Julia Child would have in her kitchen to make it yet more impressive, too much so to notice the in-wall stereo system (!!) that another estate sale attendee posted on a midcentury Facebook group to which I belong. If it were a snake, it would have bit me. My mom walked up to the house and went, "This is so-and-so so-and-so's house! I've been here!" And sure enough, it was a woman who had worked at the Red Cross with my ma at some point in her long career there. I'm not sure if the homeowner passed away or moved to retirement, but it's weird when that happens! The strangest incidence of that was when my dad and I accidentally went to my great-uncle James's house for an estate sale-- he was still walking around on God's green earth, thankfully, but was selling a friend's estate in a yard sale type set up. Me: Didn't you recognize the address?! Dad: I knew it was the same street, I didn't know it was the same HOUSE. You never know what you're going to come up with in service of searching for other people's household junk, haha.

Can you make out the cook top under the pans? Imagine it had a curved type alcove in which it was situated.

I really wanted this vanity because it reminded me of one Marlene Dietrich had in her house, but I couldn't think of anywhere to put it (and it was dead cheap, too! Dommage). It was in bad shape but in that cool, glamorously down at the heels type way. Look at that elephant! Better believe if that was there or I'd seen it somewhere I would have been mightily tempted.

I also almost bought this faux ostrich skin hat case, but the handle was busted and I wasn't sure how to fix it. Love you, miss you, train case:

I want to look up this house when it hits the market, but I'm sure with five bedrooms in a leafy part of Donelson, it's going to be 400k if it's a day. Keep dreaming, Lisa! Keep those dreams alive.

2) Bellshire:

Parker sales was having a blow out sale in Bellshire-- the people who lived there had owned a five and dime type store, I think they said, evidenced in part by the fact that there were two outbuildings full of vintage toys, the kind you would trade for tickets at the roller rink or arcade. I loved just seeing all these little bits and bobs but it was a little overwhelming in sheer volume, plus the added intrigue of trying to fight your way past resellers taking advantage of the half off day. They were out in FORCE this morning. 

Pan Am and TWA!

Even at half off, I was a little miffed at the dollar-to-four-dollar price tags on a lot of the stuff, though as I showed interest in things, the sales employees would often quote a price that was way lower than even half off-- you'd think I'd be pleased with that, but instead I was more like, "Then WHY is it marked xyz?" I think my #1 thing that the estate sale people can do besides choosing a house with bonkers-crazy-neat-stuff is to clearly display prices and clearly establish discounts-- if things were marked fairly in the first place, half should be plenty to liquidate the remaining items on a three day sale; if you've still got beaucoup de stuff on the third day, you messed up your prices. I may not be a professional estate sale runner, but Lord knows I know the buying side of the business, and it makes your die-hard shoppers like me ticked to not have consistency with pricing. End rant.

These change purses were INSANE. I have no idea why I didn't buy at least one

Besides the prices being a smidge high and all over the board, there was so much STUFF, and most of it not very good/interesting. Not even counting the outbuildings, in the house itself, it seemed every room had an enormous grouping of like items, as if someone had gone "oh, I collect little dolls like that, let's buy one EVERY time I see one." I guess these might have been part of the aforementioned business, but again, there was way too much of everything

That skinny dog was gone, but the pair of dog-with-mailbox pieces was there, and $25...even at $12.50, I thought that was a little high. Which means I guess I didn't want it very badly, haha!

I've omitted like another 10 pictures of grouped figurines, imagine this times 10.

The big deal at this sale was Jadeitegate 2015, which went down in a big way about five minutes after I got to the sale. Whooo, peeeeeeople, hold on to your hats.

The cause of the sturm und drang

I caught this set of Jadeite mixing bowls out of the corner of my eye immediately upon entering the house-- and again, this is maybe 8:40 on the last day of the sale, so the fever pitch of resellers snapping up items at a deal before they've even had a chance to be looked at by us civilians was pretty high. Since seeing Lauren from Apron Strings Vintage build an impressive collection of this type of glassware on her blog and Instagram, I always am on the lookout for a good piece of it at a good price (because I obviously need another collection like I need another hole in my head :p). But they're cute, right? That milky green is so unusual and I know it would look good against my black table top, so it's not a completely impossible/crazy dream. A middle aged woman with a short hair cut was turning the bowls over in her hands, looking for markings, discussing the bowls with her taller, black-t-shirt-tucked-into-jeans husband who stood to the side. Nothing makes someone want something more than knowing someone else wants something, so I monitored the situation for maybe a minute to see if she'd decide against them and set the bowls down, before finally deciding to keep looking in the next room on the off chance that she would be done looking at them/given up on them by the time I came back, or would have bought them one. Nothing was well served by me pretending to look at ashtrays in a stationary position catty corner from hers, so with a shrug of my shoulders, I kept moving.

I could overhear "Do you see 'Fire King' on any of them? I don't know, I just think maybe this one..." from on down the line and my heart sank a little. Then another woman in a work apron came on the scene and dropped the bomb on this lady: "I'm sorry, those are already sold."

Now, what do you do in this kind of situation? Me, I would have colored visibly with embarrassment and disappointment, surrendered the bowls, and been kind of heartsick the rest of the day about how I'd almost got Jadeite bowls at a fraction of the cost if someone hadn't beat me to the punch by the tiniest of margins. Nooooot this lady.

How pretty do these things look altogether?

With the strength of conviction of some self-styled martyr, she dug in her heels but hard. "What do you mean?" The worker started to stammer then something about how someone had already bought the mixing bowls and was just up at the counter paying. "How can they be sold when THEY'RE RIGHT HERE IN MY HAND? THEY'RE RIGHT HERE IN MY HAND!!" the buyer lady spat, loud enough that several fellow shoppers turned in her direction, prairie dog like, at the commotion. "Let me check for you, I mean, they might not have been sold, but I'm pretty sure that little girl who was here earlier bought them," the salesperson said, making fatal error #2. Fatal error #1, either mark the dishes or move them to the sold table, don't leave them in the field of play where someone who is waiting to chew someone else out for no reason might take offense at their presence. Fatal error #2, not standing your ground, thus planting hope in the already ticked off lady's mind as to the possibility that she might be going home with said dishes.

The saleslady returned with the person who had actually bought the dishes, who I couldn't see from where I was, but I could also hear. There was actual flapping of the receipt in the person-trying-to-buy-the-dishes's face by the person-who-had-bought-and-paid-for-said-dishes, which seemed a very adult and mature course of action to me, followed by the would be buyer again loudly exclaiming that she HAD NEVER heard of someone buying something and not taking it with them, how could she have bought the dishes when they're (again) RIGHT HERE IN HER HAND? Suffice to say the items were handed over without bloodshed, but a weird tension fell over the sale both during and after the verbal conflagration. I was like "Aaaaaand I'm ready to go."

What do you think? Shouldn't the lady who bought them have carried them with her or marked  them sold? Shouldn't the other lady have just gracefully admitted defeat? What would you have done?

Sorry, even glassware this pretty isn't worth getting in a bar fight over.

 Last insult to injury, I was on my way to the car when I saw this:

This conversation ensued:

Me to my dad: Oh, cool! Look they still have that old computer. I wonder if that's something I could get Matthew for his anniversary present. Go look how much it is.
Dad: Well...[looks at price tag, makes face]
Me: It's like $500, isn't it.
Dad: Close!
Me: [inspects price tag] FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS?
Dad: It's only half of that today, so that's $225!
Me: I am not paying two hundred dollars for that.
Dad: They were like three thousand dollars back in the day. I remember there was a tv commercial with Bill Bixby in it where he showed you all the things you could do with it...you could type....and I guess add stuff....
Me: [a "Nancy" comic strip caricature of Nancy in a bad mood]

FORGET THIS SALE. #booooooooooooo

Michael Taylor warehouse:

I mainly went to the Michael Taylor sale to see if they still had this:

They didn't. And this:

They did but it was $450 with 40% off. You do the math, I can't see through my tears here to do the necessary figuring.

This I was mightily tempted to get IN SPITE of its $40 after discount price tag. It's a 1930's/1940's circus wagon toy, with about the most charming illustrated lions you're likely to see any time soon:

Best part? When the wheels roll, they have some kind of thing rigged up to where it makes a sound like a calliope or a pretty set of chimes. DID I NOT SAY CHARMING?

Epilogue (and a Navy Suit):

We went to one last sale where I didn't take any pictures or save any pictures from the website-- BLVD estate sales has a commercial space right around the corner from MT, so I thought "Ah, why not." There wasn't much of interest, but as I was leaving, I almost knocked something off a wall where it was hanging (because I bear the grace and carriage of Dovima, obviously, in my day to day dealings), and when I picked it up, it ended up being the only thing I bought at all the sales! This WWII Naval Officer's uniform was $48 with 75% off, so I snapped it up, along with a picture of the group on their ship the USS Alaska, for $14 total. What am I going to do with it? WHO KNOWS, I wanted it. Here's a picture of the goods:

I need a haircut. Or some curlers. SOMETHING. Also note Marc Creates piece from post before last sulking against the wall, unhung. Shame!

Impressive, right?!

The pants and jacket are VERY skinny, but I like having the complete set, and for less than fifteen bucks!

I gotta get back to the grind, but do tell me what you got into this last weekend! Any great finds? Any near catfights? Any weird houses? I'd love to hear all about it. :)

Have a great Friday, and I'll talk to you next week!

Craiglist Forever (Wheelin' and Dealin' at She Was a Bird)

Good morning!!

Man oh man, it's opposites day here at She Was a Bird...instead of telling you all about the vintage stuff I've been BUYING (and there's still been a steady stream of that, we'll get to some new finds next week), how about a story about selling? That's right, I should never say never, because I have spent years saying it was too much trouble to clear out my attic/utility room/closet/every available square space of my house to make room for new collections-- well, let me tell you, I've been cleaning out and rehoming some stuff, and it feels GRAND.

Wanna hear all about it?

Don't worry, I'm still buying things, as you can see from this photo, taken in the wild from last weekend. :)

A couple weeks ago, I went up into the attic to look for a box of Hawaiian dresses in preparation for a tiki-appropriate dress code for a social event (like you do). On top of a pile of boxes was a bar cart I'd picked up at a yard sale and had been meaning to do something with...next to that a trunk that I was going to clean up...across from a man sized ziplock bag (not sure why they make them in this size, it's so enabling for us clothes hoarders) of vintage coats and dresses. "How did all this accumulate?" I asked myself, before doing another spot check of my person for spiders and switching off the naked bulb that illuminated the space. Over the entire den in my house is a wooden floorboard attic, and every square inch of it was full of S-T-U-F-F stuff. I definitely couldn't tell what was in a lot of it by my seemingly purposefully cryptic labels in magic marker ("DRESSES S/M/L ALL TO KEEP VINTAGE" is less helpful than you'd think it would be when there are fourteen identical boxes labelled the same), and seeing as it is hotter than the hubs of Hades up there at any point the sun is out, I've taken to planning my attic assault by taking a box or two down, going through it, and sorting it in the good old fashioned way: keep, toss, donate, sell. That last category is where things have gotten interesting in the last few weeks.

Can you spot the children's piano, crate of Life magazines, 1960's endtable, picnic basket, 1950's suitcase, and bright orange traincase in this photo? I can but I wish I couldn't!

Much like my steadfast conviction, five or six years ago, that there was nothing at the flea market except as-seen-on-tv junk and homemade soaps and other non-antiques (how mistaken could I be!), I was equally prejudiced and equally wrongheaded about selling things on Craigslist. I don't know where this preconception came from, but before starting to sell things, I was positive that there was zero market for the kinds of non-furniture vintage smalls I've been sitting on for weeks, months, years and I might as well give the stuff to Goodwill instead of trying to hawk it on the internet. Doesn't everyone on Craigslist buy like used cars, outboard motors, big pieces of contemporary furniture, or surplus renovation materials? I know I've found a piece of vintage furniture or two on the site, but when it came to a lot of the kind of stuff I like (small, less than 100 years old, cheap), I can remember seeing the same two lamps or the same 1950's piggy bank sit on the site for what seems like years without finding a happy home.

When I mentioned downsizing, lots of my friends suggested eBay or Etsy, but I've heard my share of horror stories with regard to buyers not reading the condition info, turning up their noses at non-mint-condition items, saying they never got an item, etc, etc. With working full time, I don't exactly have a lot of time, energy, or patience to make online selling a successful habit, so I thought, heck, I'll put some stuff up on Craigslist and see what happens.

To get straight to the point, what happened was, I made A BOATLOAD of money.

Take exhibit A:

Shown in the ad with and without window dressing, haha...I just borrowed things from my in-use bar cart to feather out the image a little.

This, the aforementioned bar cart from the attic, was slung over a stack of boxes. I was using one of the glass plates to protect my Silvertone radio console/nightstand in my bedroom from getting scratched up, the other plate was behind said radio, and this frame was hanging out in the attic. It was really the impetus behind this whole selling thing, because what a CLASSY piece of merchandise to be being treated like an old shoe. I found a piece of plexiglass at an estate sale for a dollar to replace in service of the Silvertone, windexed the heck out of the thing, and put it on Craigslist with an asking price of $100. This seemed steep to me, as I'd paid only $10 for it at a yard sale on my street, but as other carts were selling for as much if not more on the Nashville site, I added the necessary "hollywood regency", "mad men", "vintage retro" word tags to my listing and crossed my fingers. Keep in mind the only work I'd put into it whatever was the windex treatment-- no spray paint, no refurbishing, nada.

Within an hour, I had three emails asking about the cart-- not even to check it out or give it a looksee, but offering cash money in hand for it at my soonest convenience! You could have knocked me over with a feather. Telephone arrangements were made, we met at a public place in Inglewood, and I was $90 richer. Who would have thought?! Anybody but me, I'm sure.

Since then, I've been listing things left and right as I can from the attic and the second bedroom/office in my house. As I've been telling people who've been buying the stuff, it's all GREAT stuff, I just don't have room for it anymore-- and that's the God's truth. The goal, ultimately, is to get that room completely cleaned out in the next year to house our future progeny (though I did point out to Matthew that technically any room a baby lives in is "the baby's room"...even if that room is full of 1960's house decorating manuals and stacks of new wave singles on 45s). In order to keep the things I like, I think 90% of the stuff in the attic has got to gooooo. And especially areas of collecting where I have WAY. TOO. MANY. of a certain thing.

Case in point? Hats. Oh, Lord, the number of hats I have bought in my lifetime.

"But Lisa, you love hats!" And as I'm sure I've mentioned a dozen times or so on this blog and hundreds of times in the real world-- I love hats, hats don't love me! My rule for the last ten years or so as been if it's less than $10 and it's stylin', buy now ask questions later. This left me with, oh, right around 60 some odd hats floating around, forty plus of which do not fit my oversized head. I went all Kon Mari and piled them in a chair in the living room, and started taking pictures at the kitchen table (with the help of this wig mannequin I bought at a Michael Taylor sale a while back...I knew it would come in handy eventually!). I put them up on Craigslist and waited...and waited...and waited. Nothing. My initial success with the bar cart had left me primed for disappointment, I guess.

But then....

About two weeks into the post, I got an email from a  super nice girl representing a group in a small town in west Tennessee. They're doing a WWII themed homecoming this year, and needed clothes and hats and sundries to wear and to decorate store windows in the town square as if it were 1945. Would you believe, they drove all the way up to Nashville to buy almost all the hats I'd displayed and a bag of purses, to boot! I couldn't believe it. En plus, the woman who bought the hats forwarded my supplementary flickr folder of items for sale to another person in the group who bought two boxes of further stuff I hadn't even listed on CL yet. SUCCESSSS......

Other things I've sold so far:

• Mid century pole lamp (bought at 75% off sale from the last post with the china, got home, realized I had nowhere to put it, sold it at great profit to someone who loves it = win/win)
• 25 vintage dresses, one 1970's yellow tuxedo jacket [miss you til I join you...it was too big for Matthew :'( ]
• Two vintage radios (don't worry, I still have like 10 more to make a keep/sell decision on)
• Two barcarts (the second is on the right here...the barware and jackelope decanter stay with me, though!!)
• A Butterprint Pyrex dish (which I only sold in order to keep myself from trying to collect more...I need another collection like I need another hole in my head...)
• 40 something hats

It doesn't sound like a lot, but oh my gosh, it feels like a lot. So here's a fond adieu to some of the stuff I've already sold, and boy, am I looking forward to the stuff I'm going to sell/donate in the future. It's been great actually seeing some of the things I'd had squirreled away for years and years UNDER all these things I'm ready to get rid of, so there's a silver lining to it other than the monetary reward or re-selling! I feel way less like the people on Hoarders when I can, with great discernment and personal dignity, tell Matthew that I AM keeping the Mexican embroidered tourist jacket in that plastic bag, but that he may take these three seventies' maxidresses "that never fit quite right but I was going to do something with them" to Goodwill (after I've noted them down on a piece of paper for our itemized tax deduction...props to Goodwill for updating their site so you can keep track of these things online after you donate!). With the caveat of "quick, quick, put them in the car before I change my mind!" following swiftly on the heels of that statement, but hey...progress is progress. :)

How about you? Been on any massive clean-out binges lately? Have you ever sold or bought things on Craigslist? How did the experience treat you? Any tips for beginners? Let's talk!

That's all for today but I'll be back next week with some things I bought (you didn't think I'd done a COMPLETE 180 from collecting...never!). Until then, happy hunting! Talk to you next time.

PS: Not long after posting this, I was going through estate sale listings for this weekend and saw this-- it's the same cart! $200! #nowidontfeelsobad #mustabeenapopularbrand.  -Lisa

Real Talk: Real Estate Horror Photos Edition (Or: "You Don't Want To Sell This House, DO You?")

Good afternoon!

It's Monday! WE LIVED. Whatever the opposite of my Thursday state of mind was, I think I'm in it-- my morning has been like this long slog through book paging slips, paperwork, and minor irritations. I have no photos of the things I did this weekend, either! What kind of a blogger am I? I've been watching 48 Hours Mysteries and repairing books to limit my human interaction in this volatile condition I'm in, but lunch time is here, so why not enjoy some FREAKING INSANE houses I've seen in the midst of my house hunting? Maybe a little haterade and this tofu/brown rice dish will bring my spirits back up. 

Disclaimer: I am not technically looking for a house right now--mainly because I haven't seen anything that meets all the criteria: turns my head, pre-1970, on this side of town, and not astronomically out of my price range (bonus for sixties' wallpaper mural in dining room or pink and black tile bathroom). But as a red blooded American girl of a certain age, I am also always looking for a house. In the next year or two, we're definitely going to be in the market, so practice isn't necessarily a bad thing. And who's to say a prince of showplace mightn't show up while I'm just nosing around?  I collected these photos while sifting through Zillow listings  in the last few months just in case some perfect mid-century ranch pokes its head up from the waters long enough for me to long-net it. THEY'RE SO BAD. 

How bad? Take a look yourself.

1) The Crime Scene House

This house showed up because I forgot to set my parameters to something with a minimum of $100,000. In Metro-Nashville, if it's a full-fledged, two or more bedroom house and under that price, something is usually desperately wrong with it. Me: "Oh, look, this Victorian fixer upper on Cahal is only $100,000! Wait..it doesn't have a roof. Or a floor. Because of the fire." ((stony glare at computer monitor)) I know house hunting isn't exactly a "bargain" market, but you know I'm still trying, even in my hypothetical searching, to find gold dust in the rough at fool's gold prices. This house was $59,000, a price that makes you go, "Hold up, I might not actually have to take out a million year mortgage to be a homeowner? You mean I could live in my own home for that much?" Drawback-- the house was in a pretty dicey neighborhood in north Nashville. But seeing the cheerful little exterior that might just need a weedwacker and a couple cans of paint to make it liveable, I clicked forward in good faith. The progression went exactly like this:

"Cool, so it looks like it was somebody's grandma's house! Nice fireplace, and look at the interior door there! The paneling...not so good, but we can work with this!"

((click))

"Aw, neat, so there's a piano there, too! You know, I hear all the time about people who move into a house and there's still a piano from the previous owner, wouldn't that be great to just inherit a piano? The main thing that's been keeping me from that all these years is having to move one, and it would already just be--"

((click))

"Uhhh...ok, so this is a little more cluttered than I thought it would be, and it's weird to have an electrical panel right there in your dining room, but it could be worked with, right? Clear that mess out...put down some crazy cheerful linoleum floor...paint the door...still not terrible! The people were probably still in the process of cleaning out grandma's house when the realtor came to take the photos."

((click))

Cue the sound of a dream that has died. "Is Grandma still in there somewhere?" Note that the drawers are missing from the dresser, and everything generally looks "shook down" in the worst way. Hear the tiniest voice of non-reason in my head going, "Hey, free art deco furniture...and hardwood floors...?" and watch me click through to the last  picture, where I will see....

Whatever is happening in this kitchen. Nice work on the ad hoc, cooking pan wall between the stove and the counter. What purpose does this even serve? I feel sad that the house was allowed to be neglected for this long, but way sadder that someone went "No, no need to straighten up for the real estate photos, it'll be fine" and inadvertantly gave me this weird glimpse into how-somebody-lived. I usually am able to at least imagine what the place would look like fixed up, but this one is a head scratcher.

You want more?

2) The Hoarder House

I can't remember what neighborhood this house is in, but realize that all the houses I'm showing you in this batch are no longer on the market. Why, because someone realized they needed to get the joint together before bringing in prospective home owners? No, because they're S-O-L-D. Again, I don't know if to redevelopers, flippers, house-tearer-downers, but this seems impossible to me. About this one, though, how great is the stone work on the outside of the house? Sure, it's got a Grey Gardens vibe going on from the exterior pictures, but maybe things improve when you take it inside!

Orrrr....not.

What surprised me about this house is that it's not Hoarders-level, even if the person who lived in the house might have had issues with hoarding. That up above? That would take me maybe like an eight hour day to get looking like somebody's home they actually live in. The thing that worries me about these photos is maybe somebody already did that much work and this is what it looks like AFTER they exhausted an attempt to get the place together.

The optimist in me goes, "Oooh, look at those door ways." The rest of me goes, "NO. NO. NO. NO. NO."

Luckily, these kitchen and bathroom photos are blurry. Don't even want to speculate on what's going on in that fridge. Another hypothesis about the house-- maybe it's a house someone lived in for awhile, left in an extreme state of disarray, and then sat empty (relatively speaking) for a few years before it was finally put up for sale. I've been to maybe two dozen estate sales where it was obvious that the house was legally kept in the family, but not maintained since the last person (someone's elderly relative, etc) moved into some kind of elder care situation, because we can't sell Aunt So-and-So's house...even if she won't ever return to it as such. Do you ever wonder how many houses in your neighborhood are just sitting empty? Or sitting with-all-the-furniture but no actual tenant?

And then there's....

3) The Do Not Enter/ Silent Hill House

Last but not least, this house wasn't nearly as terrible as the two I've just shown you, but there was something decidedly spooky about the photos. Is this just how an empty house looks, kind of lonely and foreboding? Realtors talk about "staging" a house (imagine Annette Benning in American Beauty, trying to make the house look as "marketable" as possible), and good gracious, this one could use a pole lamp, a chair, even a chevron rug-- something! Anything!-- to make it look a less like "the forbidden zone".

Look at this picture:

It would be reasonable for me to be going "Oh, nice closet! Knotty pine paneling!" Instead, a little fearful thought is quailing from it in my subconscious. "Whaaaat's.... beeeehind....the doooor....Liiiiisssaaa..." I should have never been allowed to read Stephen King and seventies' horror comics at a young, impressionable age...but then maybe I wouldn't be the person I am today!

It's not me, dude, it's THE ROOM in this case:

Don't they remind you of those "escape the [insert horrifying location here]" point and click games? In college, I used to freak myself the frank out clicking on a bathroom mirror in a flash game like that where suddenly a skull or a bloody handprint would appear. At least this picture was taken in broad daylight!

Pop quiz: WHERE. DOES. THAT. LADDER. GO.

a) Attic storage, silly! There's probably a bunch of asbestos shingles and old coat hangers up there. Go look and see if they left anything good.
b) The last known whereabouts of the people who disappeared from this house exactly a year ago...under mysterious circumstances.
c) Ghost City, USA; population: YOU.
d) ALL OF THE ABOVE.

David Lynch would get a kick out of these interiors. Just add some industrial noise, slow panning cameras, and a closeup of a cigarette's ash.

Anyway! I can't lie, that kick to my blood sugar levels and my hate train refueling made me feel a little better! What about you? Which of these houses oogs you out the worst? Can you imagine a terrifying old time radio show set in one of these locales? What's the weirdest home listing you've ever seen? Let's talk.

I gotta get back to work, but have a fabulous Monday, and I'll see you tomorrow (in a better mood, I hope)! Til then.

Weekend Finds: HellllLLLLOOO Kroehler China Cabinet (1950's)

Good morning!

How was your weekend? I hope you were out enjoying some of the sunshine and good weather we had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday-- you KNOW where I was...the flea market! As was everybody else, and they momma...that place was crammed packed full of people on Saturday! On Friday, I dropped by just to spin my wheels and picked up some baubles and trinkets I'll show you tomorrow...Saturday, I apparently just lost my mind and bought, on the spot, right there in Shed 2, a 1950's blonde wood china cabinet. 

Check! Her! Out! Folks!

My dad and I were making the rounds of the sheds when he went over to take a better look at a china cabinet I'd seen the day before with a matching sideboard. "Did you see this?" he asked, already taking a look at the sliding glass doors with their notched handles. I hadn't even gone over to it on Friday, figuring the sideboard went with the cabinet, and both were probably out of my price range, but today the sideboard was sold, and the china cabinet remained, and didn't it look even better than it did the day before. "Look at how little it is!" Pappy said, pointing out the unusually diminutive size of the cabinet. Maybe this was originally to fit in a little dinette-style kitchen like I have? Or an apartment? At any rate, it is both shorter and slimmer than most midcentury china cabinets I've seen in real life.

The kicker was when Dad opened the long drawer and we saw this stamped into the wood of one of its panels:

Um, YES?! Kroehler ("say Kray-ler", its forties' and fifties' ads mentioned beseechingly in their bylines) was a Chicago based  furniture company that was TOP O' THE HEAP in the midcentury. While I'm mainly familiar with their couches (see this ad that is making me cry, or the series of sofas I wrote about in this post and this post), this was no average stick of furniture! The asking price on the tag dangling from the drawer pull was $225, and the man running the booth said he'd take $195 as he watched us oogling and ogling, in our best non-committal way, the different working parts of the cabinet. I don't know if you can see them in this picture, but the whole thing sits on tiny, atomic-slanted legs, and the drawer pulls are just adorable. Dad: "That's a good price, but it just depends on whether you want it or not." Me: "You think it's worth two hundred bucks? I'm asking, because any time I spend more than like $20 on something it's gonna bother me like maybe I was suckered or being foolish." Dad: "No, it's a solid piece of furniture, if you want it, I'd say it was worth that." I approached the dealer, still feeling the pang of despair from an earlier encounter in the antiques shed, where my hopes of acquiring a fifties' western fringe shirt were cruelly dashed by the man's not-budging price of $50 (and my unwillingness to pay more than about twenty dollars for it). "You couldn't do any better on that cabinet, could you?" I asked. He looked at it for a second and said, "I could do $175." Really, I wanted to pay $150 or less, but heck, fifty dollars off his original asking price...AND I was going to buy it either way....I'LL TAKE IT! We negotiated how to get the thing out of there and where to pick it up, and the dealer wrote us a pickup pass.

I spent the next forty minutes nervously walking around the fairgrounds, looking at other things, trying to quell mounting fears. I knew it was a good price and it was a great piece, but the buzzing in my head wouldn't stop after forking over about 90% of my bankroll. Would the china cabinet fit in the space where the baker's rack currently sat? Was it wider than it looked? What if the yellow clashed with the paint in the kitchen? How were we going to get my dad's truck up to the shed? Would we try to move it and realize the construction was way more fragile, sixty plus years down the line, than it had been when it moved off the floor room in the early fifties'? What if we got back and the guy was actually gone? We picked it up with little to no trouble after grabbing lunch at Nuvo Burrito, and had it in the house and ready to be loaded up with goodies not long after. I'll show you for yourself how well my dad and I eyeballed and judged the size of it, in this side by side comparison of what my kitchenette looked like Saturday morning and what it looked like Saturday night:

Not bad, huh? The second photo is a panoramic view of my kitchen, which doesn't weirdly veer off in the right in real life-- I just haven't got the hang of the technology yet! Here's a more static photo, again, demonstrating how much more ROOM and how much classier the joint looks with the addition of this china cabinet:

The hulking microwave you see in the before baker's rack photo is now down at my grandma's house-- she had a smaller one she wasn't using, so I brought that one up to go on the counter under the cabinets. The aluminum/wax paper/paper towel holder is awaiting being mounted to the wall in a different place, but other than that-- ALL the items that were on the baker's rack to begin with have found a happy new home in the china cabinet! I worked like a turk (something my mom used to say all the time...see the unexpected origins of this phrase here) to clean the whole thing out and get everything to rights before dinner, and I can't lie, I kept coming into the room and admiring how well it had turned out the rest of the day! As for the baker's rack, we collapsed it into its original, disassembled state to store until such a time as I have a big enough kitchen (or formal dining room, please, vintage house gods, hear my plea), and wah-LA! That's it!

While I was taking way too many pictures of this one item, I thought I would show you some of the things inside the cabinet, just for kicks:

I bet you recognize some of these things from previous blog posts, if you're a frequent flier here at She Was a Bird! There's a set of chartreuse planters from the forties' or fifties', a cup from the Texas Centennial in 1936, that little deer planter from the Shawnee Pottery Hendersonville sale, my Bee Gees lunchbox, and some Ben Siebel pieces from an estate sale and Goodwill (I never use them, but it's because I just love looking at them enough to own them), and a desk basket featuring Raby Castle (from this post).

This opens into a long, large drawer for table linens and napkins and placemats (so! fancy!) and even more storage in the bottom (where I hide my blender and other kitchen implements out of sight).

My vegan-is-as-vegan-does cookbook collection (Skinny B Ultimate Everyday Cookbook is the best I think), and a tequila bottle shaped like a little calavera type thing that my friend Anna brought as a gift to my engagement party last year (the tequila is gone, but how cute is the bottle?!):

I almost didn't buy that needlepoint because I was in a "being good about not buying things" phase. Aren't I glad I have feet of clay and unexpectedly weak resolve sometimes!

So! What do you think? Money well spent? Doesn't it look so much more put-together than the baker's rack? I was totally all right with that part of the house until this dreamboat sailed into my life and shook things up! Do you have a china cabinet? What kind of gewgaws and what nots do you decorate it with? There's actually a plate rail on the back of the top two shelves behind glass, but I'm still deciding if I want to mix it up with plates or just have what I have in there, because I like it very much as it is! What did you see out at the flea market or out in the world this weekend? Let's talk!

That's all for today, I gotta go grab my lunch while I can, but you have a fabulous Monday, and I'll see you back here tomorrow with more finds! Til then.