Thrifty Thursday

This is what I scored from Freecycle...I heart Freecycle. I've gotten two antique dressers from there and an armoire. Today I'll share the armoire and one of the'new to me' dressers.

First the dresser. It's pretty sad, but it will be fun to bring back to life. Art deco style, veneer off in a lot of places. My older sister is my 'go-to guru' for antiques and glassware. The age is probably 1920s-30s...it has all four caster wheels and they are steel. That in itself is a hint of its age. I have another chest that is probably 1940s...wooden wheels...all the steel went into the war effort. The drawers are all perfect. I don't know if someone else fixed them at some point, but they are dovetail joints and Cabinet Man pulled them all out last night and checked. He doesn't want to have to fix them ;D The veneer would be held on with hide glue. I've not decided if I

want to try actually re-veneering it myself...Cabinet Man is too busy this summer to take on this project and has already pretty much hinted told me that I am on my own...he'd rather design and build from scratch than refinish, although he can, does and will...but he has to be paid. I can't afford him, can't seduce him, and he's a better cook than me, crying has NEVER worked so...but I want to try doing it myself anyway. I will have to beg/seduce in order to use his clamps (apparently you can never have enough of those things) and glue. So I may just get the veneer off, decide that is as far as I am going and paint it either black or white...I think with black I could mix red and black to fill in the lines...not to 'fill' them in, but to color the design. Make sense? Didn't think so. I know what I mean though...

Isn't that the prettiest design on the front? I hate seeing it like this, but if it weren't like this, I'd have not gotten it so...she'll be happier eventually.

This is the armoire. Solid wood, cherry/mahogany finish. One door missing, the back needs to be fastened back on and it is deep enough for the television (we don't have an LCD...yet ;) Probably going to be painted white. I thought about black, but it's big enough and our den is small enough that it would probably be overwhelming, so white it is. I'm repainting our den a yellow, so it will be enough difference to stand out, but not be too imposing.

I forgot this chair until I went out to take a pic of the armoire. I've got the armoire, a chest and the chair in the shop bay at my office until I can get a bit cleared out of the garage and CM can move a couple of pieces of equipment to his shop (like he promised 3 years ago!) Then we can hang one of the bikes up and...never mind. Suffice to say I'll never get a car in my garage...ever.

This was a 'side of the road' discard...as in on the way to work, "Hey, circle the block so I can check out that chair!" (grumble, grumble, gripe, keeping me from doing my work...) I checked the sturdiness and figured I'll learn how to do wicker repair. If nothing else, I'll buy some caning like you do for a chair bottom, glue it in there and paint the whole thing. Either way, it's getting painted again. I drive by there on the way to work daily...2 other pieces in the backyard I'm hoping to score when they toss them ;D Or I can come up with cash this summer (and nerve) to stop by and offer them $25 for the other chair and table or footstool.

Since all the trash pickup in our city is private contractor with households, we don't have a City Wide Put out your trash day like I see other bloggers talking about. We won't discuss how long it took me to figure that one out. Our city has decided that they want to regulate that now and ruin the efficiency of the system. I'm not sure what areas they are talking about where trash is scattered, etc...more a case of our city government is wanting to try to bring in money as they can't figure out how to cut costs. Considering that we would have to buy the trucks in order to do this...I'd much rather they spend the money in clearing off some side roads after a bad snowstorm. But that's a topic/gripe for another day.

Linky to http://lbratina.blogspot.com/2009/05/thrifty-thursday-plus-tablescape.html for other fun finds.

PS. Spellcheck thinks I am misspelling 'armoire'....am I?