How To Find a Find: Our Thoughts on Thrift Stores

We got absolutely no work done last weekend. Instead, we went camping. We spent the weekend hiking, fishing and huddling up around a campfire with the dogs.

Our motto is, “Why do it when you can OVERdo it?” And that’s basically what we did last summer and fall. We were in a zone. Every week was spent working on work stuff, and every weekend was spent working on house stuff. There were entire months where we didn’t do anything but work, work, work. Remember how all-work-no-play made Jack Nicholson go all axe-wielding maniac? We decided we’re going to put a stop to our workaholic ways before we get to that point.

Instead of work-work-work, we’re going for a work-play-work. That way, we don’t totally burn out like we did this winter. Added bonus: getting out gives us the chance to score some sweet finds for our house. We’re talking thrift shopping, baby! On our way back from camping, we stopped at an antique store and took a look around.

We didn’t find anything on that trip, but we did recently acquire some vintage stuff that we later found elsewhere for more than what we paid. Remember these chairs that we nabbed for $6 a pop at a Salvation Army?

While we were sanding those puppies down, we found a manufacturer’s stamp:

It’s basically a little metal coin that’s set into wood so it sits flush. We didn’t notice it before because it’s in a really discreet spot on the leg. We Googled and found out that the W.H. Gunlocke Chair Company is now known as just Gunlocke, and they’re still producing chairs.

Based on the logo on our chairs, these suckers were built sometime between 1940 and 1969. A little more Googling and we found a few places selling those same chairs for way more than $12 a pair. A pair sold for $300 here. There’s one chair for sale on Etsy for $300. Yeah. $300 for one chair. And these are in “vintage” condition — they need to be refinished and reupholstered. So nabbing a pair for $12 was seriously lucky.

In case you’re wondering what the status on those chair is, we managed to completely sand one down before we ran out of sanding pads. We haven’t stopped by the hardware store in a while, so the chairs are just sitting there, waiting on us to get moving again. As far as fabric goes, we’re considering leather. Upholstering leather makes us a bit nervous, but we’re studying up on YouTube and trying to figure out where we can score some vintage cigar leather.

Another lucky find happened just a couple of weeks ago. Bradley’s boss owns a cabin in a teeny town in northern Pennsylvania. (We’ve been calling it Upstate Pennsylvania, but it’s not catching on.) We spent a week there in April, and learned the hard way that teeny towns don’t do street signs. We saw some people sitting around outside a barn, so we stopped to ask for directions. When we got a peek inside the barn, we realized it was actually an antique store. Way out in the middle-of-nowhere.

The people were nice enough to give us really detailed directions on how to get to the nearest highway, so we had to stop and take a look. They twisted our arm with their niceness. And this amazing pendant that was peeping out from a corner:

That’s a huge brass pendant. There’s a spot inside for a bulb and a hook at the top so it can be hung on a chain like a chandelier. The two pieces on the floor next to the pendant were removed at some point (probably for rewiring) and they need to be reattached. Easy fix.

We knew right away that this was The One — the fabulous lighting fixture for the top of our staircase. We walked away with the pendant and a huge gold frame (that we haven’t photographed yet) for $65. $15 for the frame and $50 for the pendant. We didn’t haggle over prices because a) they seemed like really nice people and b) we’re pretty sure that, based on the location of this shop, we were their only customers all week. We thought $65 was totally reasonable when we took that into consideration.

Cut to a few weeks later and we’re trolling through Emily Henderson’s blog for color palette inspiration. Emily is the host of HGTV’s Secrets of a Stylist, which we think is the only show on HGTV worth watching. We loooove her and her show, so we were kinda floored when we saw this pendant she posted about:

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Pretty similar to the one we found, no? Only the price tag on this one is $375. Ours is a bit bigger and more ornate, but it’s basically the same style — and we spent $50! It’s going to take about $15 and 2 hours of labor to get ours fixed up. We need to weld two spots and spray paint it. We might also change out the wiring. Not hard, time-consuming or expensive. So we think we got an amazing bargain.

As for the frame, it’s going to be spray painted and turned into a mirror for the half bathroom downstairs. We just need to have a mirror cut for it. We haven’t decided on a color yet, but we’re thinking something bold like matte black. Or something unexpected like a bright teal. We’ll figure it out once we start renovating the bathroom. Pictures of that find soon — pulling it out of the garage to photograph has taken a back seat to a couple of other projects going on right now.

Inspired by our recent good luck, we’ve been making more frequent trips to thrift and antique shops. We know it can be totally overwhelming — how do you figure out what’s A Find versus what’s junk? Here’s what works for us when we go shopping for vintage housewares:

• Partner up.
  It’s inevitable: when we go to an antique shop, one of us will get all googly-eyed over something and the other one will give it a “meh.” We’re both designers and we’re both extremely opinionated on decor. A lot of time, those opinions clash. That goes tenfold for vintage items, which can be really bold statement pieces. When we clash on those, we really clash. We have a rule that we won’t buy something unless both of us agree on it. Getting a second opinion hasn’t failed us so far.
• Take cash. But not too much.
  We usually don’t go to antique stores with more than $100 cash on us. If we see something we love that costs more, we’ll go to an ATM and take out more cash. That gives us some time to think about whether we love-love it, or whether it’s a heat-of-the-moment thing. It really keeps the impulse spending to a minimum. And, so far, we haven’t even had the urge to go to an ATM.
• Don’t force it.
  We’ve found that one of the best indicators of whether something “belongs” in our home is whether we can imagine where it will go. Usually this is a gut reaction. We saw the brass pendant and immediately thought it would look great at the top of the staircase. We saw the frame and knew it was the perfect size and shape for a above-the-sink bathroom mirror. If we find something and can picture exactly where it will fit in to our house, then ring us up. If we find ourselves hemming and hawing over where we would put something or what we would use it for, we move on.
• Is it worth fixing up?
  The best deals we’ve gotten have been on things that need some work to restore. Restoration equals time and money, so we try to balance that out against the initial cost. The pendant, for example, needs spot welding and spray paint. We have access to a welder for free and spray paint is cheap, so we jumped on it. We’ve come across other objects that are awesome, but need a ton of work that we just weren’t willing to put into it. Why buy something that’s going to sit in the garage, right?
• The antique shop is not the boss of you. You don’t have to buy anything.
  A couple of months ago, we drove to a huge antique warehouse about an hour away. We made a day out of it. We took the scenic route, we had a nice lunch at a brewery nearby, and we planned on coming back with a car full of treasures. We looked at every frikkin’ thing in that warehouse, and it was a total bust. We didn’t find a single thing that jumped out at us. At one point, we felt like we had to buy something or the day would have been a waste. But what’s actually a waste is buying something that’s not right for you or your house just because you feel like you have to. We left empty-handed, but still spent quality time together and had a lovely day off.
• What’s it worth to you?
  Here’s the thing: when it comes to vintage stuff, the worth of something is pretty much a made up number. So we make up a number. If we find something we love and think it’ll fit into our home, we’ll mentally put a price point on it before looking at the price tag. Then if we look at the price tag and it’s equal to or less than what we anticipated, we’ll get it. If it’s way more than what we expected, it’s not such a great deal for us. There are lots of shops where they don’t have set prices and the owner will just ask “what are you offering?” Or they’ll throw out a number and see how we react. In that case, we might have to…
• Haggle like a pro with a conscience.
  When it comes to haggling, we kinda don’t. We hate feeling ripped off but we also hate ripping off the shop owner. That $10 that we might be arguing about is their livelihood. More often than not, these people aren’t exactly making six figures a year. We try to remember that we’re not haggling with a vending machine — we’re talking to a human being — and we all walk away happy. That doesn’t mean we’ll shell out more money than what we think something is worth. (Remember, you don’t have to buy anything!)
• Talk to the face.
  When a shop owner throws out a price we don’t like, we let our faces do the talking. They might see us pulling a =\  and adjust the price down right away. Or they’ll ask us, “what did you have in mind?” and we’ll tell them the truth. There’s no point in low-balling, because if we think a frame would be a great deal at $15 then it IS a great deal. If they accept our offer, awesome. If our idea of what something is worth doesn’t mesh with theirs, we politely let them know it’s out of our price range and walk away. If they’re willing to lose a sale, then it’s obviously worth more to them. We don’t feel ripped off. They don’t feel ripped off. No harm, no foul.

How about you? Find any amazing vintage goods lately? How do you feel about haggling?

Back to the daily grind(er)

When we last left off with our bathroom door makeover, our hardware and doorknobs were taking a nice, long soak in some paint thinner:

We were initially planning on soaking them for 24 hours, but it ended up being a solid week thanks to the flood evacuation chaos. In the meantime, we went to our local hardware store to pick out some spray paint.

We know a lot of people are totally gaga over oil-rubbed bronze spray paint right now. (Pretty sure Sherry from Young House Love is singlehandedly responsible for that obsession!) ORB spray looks great on YHL’s door hardware, and that’s exactly what we planned on buying when we went to the hardware store.

When we found the spray paint aisle, though, we starting hemming and hawing. The ORB spray suddenly didn’t feel right for us. It seemed too glossy. Or too bronze. Or too traditional. Or not traditional enough. On the one hand, we knew it was tried-and-true. Everyone is doing it, so it works. On the other hand, everyone is doing it…

Maybe it’s because we’re both second-born children and have a constant underlying urge to rebel. A need to zag when everyone zigs. Even when it doesn’t really make sense or much of a difference. We’re not really sure. All we know is that we stood in the spray paint aisle for much longer than any normal person should, and we debated over ORB vs flat black door knobs like it meant the difference between life and death. It. Was. Dramatic. In the end, we walked out with the flat black.

We fished out our hardware and tried to scrape the paint off.

We thought that the extended soak would make the paint melt right off, but it was still hanging on for dear life. Time for Plan B: Bradley put a stiff wire brush attachment on his grinder and handed it to me. And then he told me to be extra careful about where I place my hands because the wire brush could cut my fingers. I handed the grinder back to him.

Now this is a definite case of do as we say and not as we do: if you’re going to use a grinder with a stiff wire brush attachment, you should wear protective gloves. Bradley has been using this tool on an almost-daily basis at work for years now. He told me he never wears gloves because he knows his grinder like the back of his hand. I yelled at him, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t hear me over the noise of the grinder. I’m currently considering supergluing some leather work gloves to his hands while he sleeps.

After about a minute of grinding, here’s what the lock looked like:

We loved the dimpled texture on the face of the lock so much that we almost considered not painting it. (We zigged, we zagged, we zogged.) The only problem with leaving the lock unpainted is that it would definitely rust. We could have use a clear spray paint to seal it up, but we’re not crazy about the shiny clear-coat look. After the lock, Bradley cleaned up the hinges:

These were tricky because there were so many nooks and crannies filled with paint. Bradley cleaned off as much as he could, and then I scraped the hard-to-grind areas out with a pocket knife. Here’s what one cleaned-up hinge looked like with the pin removed:

We also decided to grind and paint the original screws, because it’ll be a pain to find the perfect sized screws for all of our hardware. I found a spare hunk of wood and screwed all of the screws just enough so they held firmly upright:

We only need to clean up the parts we’ll see once the hinges are in place. You can see all of the paint buildup on the screw heads:

And here’s what they looked like after grinding:

I actually faced my fear of the grinder for this part and cleaned up the screws myself. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as I thought — just very, very loud. After that, I used a knife to clean out the buildup inside each screw head:

It sounds like a lot of work, but it really wasn’t. The grinding and scraping only took about 5 minutes. It actually took longer to set everything up for grinding.

Next, I lined everything up on a cardboard box:

I propped the hinges up so the visible side would be totally covered:

The lock was easy, because there’s only one side you’ll be able to see:

There was also the round piece that goes around the door knob and the cap to the keyhole:

And, finally, there were the porcelain door knobs:

I wasn’t sure how best to mask these puppies, so I went the overkill route. I wrapped up all visible parts of the porcelain, mummy style:

Next step: spray painting. I did 3 light, even coats and let each coat dry for 10 minutes in between. We let the final coat dry overnight, and here’s what they look like now:

We’re really glad we went with flat black and not ORB, because we’re 99% positive that the world would have come to a screeching halt if our hardware was any shinier. No sarcasm there. We’re too uptight and buttoned up for jokes. Laughter is not allowed up in this hizzy.

Up next: we have to finish painting the bathroom door and then we can finally put it back in place. That’s right, folks. We’ve been living without a bathroom door for over a week now. It was funny at first, but then we discovered just how much of our bathroom can be seen from the street. Showering has been kinda awkward ever since.

What we learned from this project:

• We’re idiots for not wearing work gloves.
  I mean, seriously, look how close his fingers are to that wire brush.
• Renovating? Save your cardboard boxes and glass jars!
  Cardboard makes a great surface to paint on. Glass jars are great for soaking brushes and other stuff in paint thinner. Just dump all your stuff in the jar, pour paint thinner over it, pop a lid on that sucker and let it soak as long as you need.
• It’s OK to sweat the small stuff.
  We know our ORB vs flat black dilemma sounds ridiculous because — hello! — it’s only hardware. Who notices hardware? Well, we do. We’ll have to live with this stuff day in and day out for a long time, so we’re pretty determined to make our space just right for us. Sometimes that means spending way too much time at Lowe’s. Sometimes it means biting our nails down to the nubs as we fret over whether we made a mistake painting our doors black. Sometimes it means redoing a project because we couldn’t get it right the first time. It’s all part of owning a space — really making it ours. And we’re OK with that!

Blogging From the Flood Zone and Restoring Our Old Bathroom Door

Holy moly, we just breathed a sigh of relief so loud they probably heard us back in Brooklyn. Our neighbor-friend Jhane (the same one who warned us about the flood) sent us a text while she was walking by our house. Walking. Not swimming. She let us know that our house is still standing and our street is totally dry. Whee! (Thanks again, Jhane!)

We’re still blogging from just outside the flood zone. We’re kinda trapped here because all of the roads around us are closed. Just half a mile away, there are houses covered almost up to their roofs in mucky river water. It’s really scary and sad, and we feel horrible for everyone who lost their homes. We’re really anxious to get back to ours. But in the meantime, we’re going to share another project we started before we had to evacuate.

We’re so close to wrapping up the guest bedroom wing, but there are a ton of loose ends to tie up. Take, for instance, the white door at the end of the hallway:

That’s the door to our bathroom. From far away, it looks great — a standard bright white interior door. And then you get up close and see this:

Jagged edges. Peeling paint. Stains. Pencil marks from where some kid drew on the door and nobody bothered erasing ‘em. They painted over the hardware a few times and it looks pretty crusty.

Still, the old skeleton key lock works and we’re in love with those porcelain knobs. We saw those same knobs at a local antique store going for $30 a pop. We also saw replicas of this exact set going for $70 in a restoration catalog. We’re pretty sure we can restore these puppies for $0 using stuff we have in our garage.

We started by taking the door off its hinges and taking off all the parts we want to save. Everything went into a big glass jar, including all of the screws:

The porcelain knobs went into their own container:

We filled both containers with enough paint thinner to completely cover all the parts:

We did this part outside because paint thinner fumes are no joke. We left everything soaking outside overnight, and came back to scrape them the next day.

The little black toothbrush thingy in front of the paint thinner is a steel wire brush. Bradley was at work so I decided to take care of this easy peasy job on my own. Carpe diem. Girl power. All that stuff.

I drained the paint thinner into another glass jar, pulled out the different hinges one-by-one, and gave them a good scrubbing in the kitchen sink. I brushed the metal in a circular motion and paint starting sloughing off. Perfect. That’s what I was going for. One entire layer of paint came off easily. The second layer, though, wasn’t budging.

I wiped the sweat from my brow. Girl power. I brushed harder and nothing happened. I kicked it up a notch to scrub mode. Still nothing. I scoured, and still nothing. I cursed, I threatened, I spat. Girl! Power! I scrubbed some more, sweat dripping, fingers aching… and then I got a text from Bradley telling me not to use the small wire brush because he had a better idea. He was going to use the grinder with a wire brush attachment and have all the paint off in about 2 minutes. *Single tear.* Everything went back in the paint thinner jar for some more soaking.

And that’s exactly where we left them when we evacuated on Thursday. We’re guessing that after a solid week of soaking in paint thinner, we won’t have to do much scraping to get the gunk off.

While the hardware soaked, we got to work on the door. Up close you can see how gunky the paint is:

It’s not all bad, however. There are some spots where cracks and lines give the door character:

Our challenge is to get rid of all the crusty, gunky bits while keeping the interesting areas in tact. We don’t want to restore this door and have it look like a brand new door from Lowe’s — we want it to look aged and interesting.

We’re pretty sure there’s lead paint in these old doors, so we vented out the room with a window fan and I put on my hot pink ventilator mask (safety first, fashion second!). I spent about 30 minutes sanding this door, and it wasn’t going the way I’d planned.

The sander was scuffing the surface, but the paint wasn’t coming off. Scuffing wasn’t going to do the trick with these doors. The old paint had bubbled up over the years. It needed to be completely stripped off. I needed paint stripper.

Meanwhile Bradley ran out of the caulk he’s using in to seal off the cement window sills so we made a run to the hardware store. We cackled the entire time about getting some caulk and a stripper. Hehe. It still makes me snort. We’re basically 13-year-olds on the inside.

Back at the casa, Bradley showed me how to strip (har har!):

The trick is to put your index finger on top of the blade and use that to apply downward pressure so the blade slides under the paint. Easy peasy. Here’s what the door looked like after scraping off all the loose gunk and giving it a sandjob (once it starts, it’s hard to stop):

The white paint was latex and it came off easily. The yellowish paint underneath? That’s lead paint. Eeps! Bradley was pretty impressed by how hard the layer of paint is (“Say what you will about lead paint, that s**t is durable.“), and we decided to leave it alone. Why bother creating lead dust if we don’t have to?

We were worried that the cracks would disappear if we removed too much old paint, but they were fine. Next step:

Yup, floor & patio paint. For our bathroom door. We spent at least an hour chatting it up with the paint guy at our local hardware store and this is what he recommended for our floors, baseboards, door frames and doors. Each gallon cost a whopping $50, but we splurged on it, but from what we’ve seen so far, it’s worth the extra dough.

We decided to skip the primer because the door was stripped down and scuffed up enough and this black paint gives some serious coverage. Here’s how it looked after one coat:

Still pretty crusty, right? We wanted to get a smooth, even paint application so we decided to do several paper-thin coats. It’s a little more work, but it always results in a very slick paint job. We scuffed the paint lightly with some 120 grit sandpaper:

And gave it a second coat:

This part was really hard to photograph because it was dark outside. I was planning on photographing it in the morning, but then this whole flood thing happened. Still, you get the general idea. What once was clumpy and goopy is now lookin’ pretty lovely. Check out the lovely cracking at the bottom that showed up when the paint dried:

We think it might need a third coat, but won’t be able to tell until we get back to the house. We also have to flip the door over, strip it and paint it white. So the door will be black on the outside but white on the inside. A black door seemed a little too overwhelming for a teeny-tiny bathroom. We’ll wrap that sucker up next weekend and get some better pictures up here.

What we learned from this project:

• Lead paint kinda rocks…if you overlook that whole lead poisoning thing. Stuff was made to last a long, long time.
• Strip first, then sand, and your old door will end up smoother than a baby’s butt. Only with more cracks and wrinkles.

Loo La La!

We have two loos in our house: a full bath upstairs and a half bath downstairs. We haven’t shared any pictures of either one on the blog so far for 2 reasons:

1. We have a one room at a time rule (even though technically we’re working on 2 rooms and a hallways right now).
2. They’re so ugly that your eyeballs would pack up their bags and run away from home. We don’t want that on our conscience.

Still, we’re getting super close to finishing up our guest bedroom / Smurf room / hallway projects — we can practically smell the paint fumes already! — so there’s been a lot of talk about the other rooms we still have to work on. Especially the hideous porch-turned-laundry room and half-bath connected to our kitchen. Those two rooms combined are the bane of our existence right now, and our heads are swimming with ideas.

Here’s what the porch and bathroom floor plan looked like when we moved in:

And here’s a before of the laundry room:

As for the bathroom, imagine the ugliest, most shoddily-put-together bathroom you can think of. Well, ours is a step or two below that. Cheap linoleum tile. Boring, standard Lowe’s sink and cabinet. Oddly shaped single-pane window. Hideous green paneled walls. …with popcorn texture. In short: booooo! hiss!!

We seriously considered the slash-and-burn method of dealing with it, but we’re not sure setting fire to a part of your own house counts as DIY or renovating. And it definitely doesn’t count as sane or normal, so we’re going to skip the arson and and go with a new floorplan instead. Here’s what we have in mind:

• The porch currently leads out to the back yard. This is one of 4 ways to get in and out of our house. It’s a bit excessive. We’re going to seal up the doorway to the outside because we need the wall space more than we need an exit.
• We’re going to seal up the doorway to the bathroom and convert the laundry room door into an open doorway (love those!). This will give us more room for kitchen counters.
• We’re going to re-open the doorway connecting the laundry room to the bathroom. You can see it in laundry room photo above — it’s the crusty white thing behind the dryer.
• One of us (ahem) really wants pocket doors for the bathroom. It’s in the whining discussion stages right now.
• We’re going to put a bathtub or shower in the bathroom. That’s right: we’re turning our half bath into a full bath. Raising property value, y’all!
• We’re going to put a sink in the laundry room area, right outside the bathroom door. Yes, this means we’ll have to go outside the bathroom to wash your hands. We’re hoping this won’t be awkward for guests. Help us out, people — would it make you uncomfortable to have a sink right outside the bathroom rather than inside?

Another thing we’ve been talking about is having white floors in the laundry room / bathroom. The whole house is going to have black floors, but we’re going for a low-key beachy vibe. Something like this:

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White paneled walls, light floors and the perfect blend of modern and antique. It’s half California, half Paris. Le swoon! And then there’s this bit of gorgeousness:

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That tub made us melt. We’re in love with the way they mixed stark white with deep black. Same with this bathroom:

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But then again, there’s something to be said for the classic white-on-white:

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If I had a bathtub that warm and inviting, I would never get out. I’d be one giant prune 24 hours a day. A tub like that isn’t made for bathing — it’s made for soaking. Luxuriating. With bath salts as opposed to the Mr. Bubble we’re so accustomed to. We’d have to become the kind of people who keep bath salts in giant apothecary jars on our window sills. And buy fancy soaps that look too pretty to actually use. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

While we’re in love with the whole claw foot tub idea (and found several on Craigslist for under $100), we’re also thinking about doing something totally insane and unconventional. Keep an open mind and feast your eyes on this:

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That, my friends, is a bathtub made from a horse trough. And we’re kind of madly in love with that idea. It can also be set up as a shower:

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We love how they raised that shower up with blocks. It looks almost Japanese. And Bradley thinks it feels more complete with legs rather than just setting the tub on the ground. The look is a little bit country and a little bit rock & roll. But with a galvanized tub, we were thinking it might be a little too much on the country side for us. And that’s when we found this:

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Ooh la la, that bathtub. When we saw it, we fanned our faces to keep from having a fainting spell. It’s super modern and super old-fashioned at the same time. We love how it’s black and white instead of galvanized. And can we please talk about the wood back rest? Mercy. In a very white bathroom with touches of black, we think it would look super elegant and totally swoon-worthy.

Our idea so far is to visit a farm supply store and buy a galvanized horse trough. We’d paint the outside and inside so the tub won’t rust, and we could make a really comfy back rest to help facilitate our hours-long soaking. And — best part — we could do all of this for under $200. A horse trough costs about $100. Paint and wood definitely won’t cost us $100, but we like to pad our estimates…just in case.

Right now, we’re in our daydream phases. Who knows? Our plan might changes a hundred times. We won’t get to these two rooms until after our next project: the master bedroom. So geeked about getting that one started. There’s something about sealing up doors and making new doorless entryways that gets us all worked up!

So what do you think? Does a painted galvanized tub sound like a good idea? How about that sink outside the bathroom? Do you prefer bath salts or Mr. Bubble? We’re dying to know!