Bargaining Tables

Bargains

We haven’t done photos for a few weeks because 1) the light’s been awful and 2) we’ve had other things going on. We’d only half-assed done garage sales, too, because we were up to our necks in other projects and commitments. It’s not like we were missing much on that front. The garage sales had been pathetic for a while. Last weekend we weren’t expecting anything different.

Buuuuuut after the past couple of weekends, I have to say our streak of “mediocre” has come to a grinding halt.

I posted these pictures on Facebook, though not what we paid or some of the other details below. (@Jean Morgan Jennings, you know, at least for some of these – but not all.)

To clarify for you, if you can’t tell from the photo: we bought a huge TV. The TV immediately above and behind in the photo is a 55-inch LED, and this one made the 55-inch look puny. While the bigger TV was around 11 years old and plasma instead of LED, it still worked, as you can see here. The sound was excellent, the color great, and the overall picture was outstanding for a plasma. It’s well worth the $20 we paid for it.

That’s right.

Twenty bucks.

We debated keeping it – talked about replacing the one in the living room, and swapping the one in the bedroom for the 55-inch one currently in the living room. But what we have now are LED sets and work great. Both are newer than the plasma TV. We ultimately agreed to sell the plasma set. It was, fortuitously, the day before the Super Bowl. Manly-man grunt-snarl sports are great for anybody selling a plus-size working TV, regardless of age. Let’s just say we had no problem flipping it, even if selling it wasn’t our original plan when we bought it.

The Table

We returned the next day for the second and third load of what we bought from the same place as the TV, including these two beauties.

Both pieces are built from solid walnut. No veneer. No plywood, No particle board. Solid wood doesn’t come cheap these days, even without the antique factor.

Despite what the photos suggest, the primitive glass-door chest was in considerably better shape than the drop-leaf table. G only had to clean and polish the chest, leaving some of the dings and marks to respect its history and antique value. It’s a well-built piece of furniture.

The table was a different story. It was leaning and none of the joints were sound. It’s been disassembled and cut apart for materials. The wood will be used in some future project(s) to be determined.

We knew the top was badly warped when we bought it. G originally intended to rip it down to its individual planks and plane them flat. But when he turned it over, he discovered the thing was riddled with wood staples and nails. The wood was split in a few places, almost all the way through. The planks were warped worse than we could tell from the top (picture at left gives you just a small glimpse). There were other atrocious “repairs” heaped on this poor defenseless piece of furniture, too. G still collected some good pieces from it, though not as much as he’d originally hoped.

The drop-leaf mechanism and vintage casters he salvaged from it are worth what we paid for it, though. Like the TV, the table was a $20 find.

The large chest, at 40″ wide and 53-54″ tall, set us back a whopping 40 bucks, and we both love it.

Below shows how well the primitive piece cleaned up. Still clearly vintage, but the dings and such are less noticeable after G’s stain touchups and a coat of beeswax polish.

And Away We Go

Keeping the big wooden chest means we had to get rid of something else so our house didn’t explode from all the stuff. We agreed to oust the chairs G reupholstered and repainted a few years ago, for starters. We still like them. They don’t, however, fit with our increasingly vintage decor. We’re trying to figure out what else can go – the electric piano is already on indefinite loan to my younger daughter. Other items are still in flux while we try to decide what to keep, sell, or give away.

These are solid, well-made chairs, so I hope they go to someone who’ll appreciate them. If we’d had more of the gray paint I’d have said to repaint the turquoise portion – but we didn’t, so they go as-is.

The Other Table. And Stuff.

This weekend we didn’t get any huge pieces of furniture. We still needed to make multiple trips to get everything home.

This find had me jumping for joy:

Yes, it’s another sewing machine. However, this one’s a huge step up in quality from what I got a few weeks ago. I figured G would give me grief about getting a second machine – then he reminded me he’s got enough vintage tools to fill an 8×10 shed outdoors, a good chunk of the carport, and more stashed in the house. So yeah… he wasn’t going to fuss if I got a second, better sewing machine.

Then, an hour or so later, we found this baby:

I’m guessing it’s of similar vintage to the Husqvarna/Viking machine we bought ahead of it.

We paid five bucks for the sewing machine table.

It’s imperfect, almost certainly not solid wood, and not my preferred style, but hey… five bucks for a decent of furniture is still a good deal. She’s sturdier than she looks, too. No clue if we’ll ultimately keep her or the sales bug will take precedence. I’m betting on the latter.

We also bought two new-in-box cast-iron Dutch ovens. G sold one (the one shown at left) before I realized he’d put it up for sale.

I grabbed the other, an enameled version, and gave him the evil eye, warning him it was mine and selling it could be harmful to his health. I washed it and put it away before he had a chance to argue the point.

Here’s hoping it’s enough to at least slow him down..

The sales bug is a raging virus in his DNA.

His dad owned a new and used furniture store. (His grandfather was a furniture maker. So was his great-grandfather.) G told me how more than once, his mom would go to the store and come home to an empty living room or dining area, because this dad sold the furniture from their house while she was away. She always got new, but still… Another time, when G was no more than 8 or 9 years old, his dad was away and a customer came in to buy. G completed the sale and scheduled delivery. (His mom didn’t want anything to do with the business and had no clue how it functioned.) He said he’s not sure who was prouder, him or his dad.

For the record, we literally had just paid the lady for the sewing machine this weekend when someone else asked about it. G offered to sell it to him for a higher amount than we’d paid for it about sixty seconds earlier, and I seriously thought the man was going to buy it. I’m not sure who was more aghast: me or the lady we bought it from.

Wouldn’t be the first time G did something like that, either.

He once sold a tool while carrying it to the car. Another time he was out with a buddy; they’d bought a bicycle at a yard sale. Someone bought it from them while they were at another sale down the street. G rode it to the guy’s house the next block over, because it wouldn’t fit into the new owner’s small car.

So far the 1950s-era lantern/flashlight (top of the page) has been assigned to the interior of the glass-front cabinet, as have a few other knicknacks we picked up over the weekend. But nothing’s sacred when G’s SELL fever kicks in.