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johnmari_gw

craigslist finds, finally!

johnmari
16 years ago

I've been watching furniture on Craigslist for quite a while - it seems like too many sellers have a rather, um, optimistic idea of the value of their worn-out, abused, unkempt and all-too-often junk-to-begin-with items, which has been rather frustrating. I've also got a slightly inconvenient shortage of friends with trucks (like "none"), so if it doesn't fit in the back of a Subaru station wagon I have to rent a truck or van. Finally, I scored, and two items in one week!

First, I've been keeping an eye out for a not-too-big and NOT-Mission-style Morris chair in my admittedly-slim budget for quite some time - I see them from time to time but they're always gone by the time I call/email (I still kick myself over not being more aggressive about one wonderfully "carved-to-death" golden oak number I saw a year or so ago, gaudy as a carnival ride and I loved it), or I get there to look at it and it's about as sturdy as a cheap lawnchair. When I was a kid my folks had one with paw feet, turned spindles and wide, flat arms, and for a couple of years I've been keeping my eye out for something rather like that. (My stepmother severed contact after my father died, so it's not like I could just beg it off them.) It's in downright dire need of new cushions, these are so thin as to be pretty much nonexistent under the bum, and it's definitely been well used over the last 100 or so years with chips and scratches aplenty, but it was also only $50! I need to hunt for a footstool to go with it - eBay will be good for that, since it'd be small enough to ship reasonably. DH has already placed dibs on it as "his chair".

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I've also needed a bureau since we moved, in the previous house I had one of those wire drawer thingies in a bedroom closet so here my clothes have been so-elegantly stored in flip-top plastic bins stacked on the floor. I found this sizable antique from Sligh - a very good manufacturer - a couple of towns over for $100! It needs to have some spots of veneer glued down and a general good cleaning, but it's in marvelous shape. It might be a bit too "massy" for the bedroom but if it is it'll fit nicely in a nook in the upstairs hallway where PO didn't extend the closet fully the way any sensible person would have, and it'd do nicely for linens. (The little white streaks on the front are paint where it got scraped a little bit against one of the doorframes when the guys were bringing it in, but we found that it rubs right off.)

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Yes, that's OSH's lovely camelback couch behind it - right now the kitchen's sitting area's sort of the "landing zone" for furniture etc. coming into the house while we try to figure out where they are going permanently, but here's a better pic... ;-) If anyone's considering Highland House furniture, definitely go for it, because it's incredibly sturdy and SO comfortable!

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I was really looking forward to meeting OSH but the "CFS monster" decided I wasn't going anywhere. Megabummer. :-( If I'd just been "ordinary tired" I'd have gone anyway and just paid for it later because you just don't get to meet forum folk every day, but some of the extra-nasty neuro symptoms decided to come out and play this morning (not good, means too much of the bulling-through stuff) so DH sent me to bed and made the trip down to Boston by himself. What a prince! I slept all day, woke up for an hour to eat and send a couple of emails when DH got home, went back to sleep and just got back up a little while ago to watch "Torchwood". ;-)

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