Sunday, June 10, 2012

Neither trash nor treasure, just practical

Last summer, I bought a pair of nightstands at my neighbor's yard sale. When I posted about it on Facebook, a couple of friends got into a discussion about how I was buying junk and this is a hoarding behavior. They wouldn't let it go. I was offended--really offended. Every room of my home has something in it that came from a yard sale or was trash-picked.

This does not make me a hoarder. My house is cozy and cute, and not particularly cluttered. I just hate to see nice things go to a landfill only because no one has the vision to see how a little care and attention could bring something back to life. Frank and I both do a very good job of fixing and rehabbing items that aren't trash at all--just treasures waiting to be revealed.

The day I bought them last summer, I cleaned up the nightstands and gave them a coat of primer before storing them in the garage for later rehabbing. In the meantime, I needed to find new hardware that was suitable for these pieces. I wanted something colorful with a vintage look. Anthropologie had exactly what I wanted, but the drawer pulls were outrageously expensive (hey, it's Anthropologie).

Time passed. The nightstands gathered dust in the garage, and winter set in. Then, Anthropologie had a big sale. The hardware went on sale at 70 percent off. I bought the drawer pulls.

This weekend, the weather was perfect for painting, so Frank pulled out all of the half-full cans of paint we had on hand. My original color choice, a sort of Southwest palette of muted yellow and dusty brick red, didn't work out. The paint had gone bad in the cans, so we rummaged some more and came up with a different color combination that would work.

Here are the before and after pictures. Fuck those people who think that buying old things at a yard sales means you're a hoarder. They lack creativity, and honestly, that's sort of sad.

The nightstands the day I bought them: Solid, well-built, and waiting for rehab.

Here they are after, painted and with new ceramic and brass hardware.

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