My Salvaged Treasures: March 2014

Thursday, March 27, 2014

A New Life for an Old Sewing Machine Cabinet

I'm not one to pass up free furniture, so when my sister offered me two old sewing machine cabinets she had been storing in her garage for years, how could I resist? One cabinet was in decent shape and is getting a paint job; the other one was a different story.

One side, the top, and two pieces from the front were all I was able to salvage from this poor cabinet that had seen better days. I was anxious to get started on it and didn't get a picture before the deconstruction.

It was brought back to life with the help of CeCe Caldwell's Seattle Mist and Vintage White paint, wallpaper, glue, and two vintage glass door knobs.

Much better! I glued and nailed the small piece from the front of the cabinet to the top of the salvaged side for an instant shelf.

The raised design in the center is nothing more than embossed wallpaper. I cut out a shape from a much larger piece, wet the back, then pressed it in place.

After the first coat of paint dried, I worked in small sections and painted on good ol' Elmer's glue in random areas. To achieve the cracks, I went over it with a second coat of paint before the glue dried completely. I'm too impatient to watch paint dry, so I used a hair dryer to speed up the process while I watched the cracks magically appear.

Ready for hanging with a couple of hooks and wire. I have no idea why I painted the back.

Where were all my nice towels when I needed them? There's about a 1 1/2" gap between the wall and cross bar.....plenty of room for a towel or some pretty vintage linens.

Friday, March 21, 2014

A Sweet Surprise

It's true, you never really know what you're going to get when you open a box of chocolates. I love my See's candy, but would never consider buying any at a yard sale unless I had a pretty good idea there was something else hiding inside.

This box obviously weighed more than 2 pounds.

Oh yeah! For $1.00 I didn't care if it was a box full of plain white plastic buttons.

Eye candy!

Lots and lots of button candy to sort through. Just like a box of chocolates, I'll have fun picking out the ones I like.

There was a table full of jewels right next to the button candy; I just grabbed the mirrored tray and started loading 'em on.

Oh what fun I'll have playing with these.

The first thing I noticed when I pulled up to the second sale was the old phone sitting on a table in the driveway. OK, I'll take it....along with a few other goodies.

A little research showed that it's a Danish phone probably from the early 1940s. Need an ambulance? Just dial 0.

Hope you all have a wonderful first weekend of spring. I'll be a vendor at the Vintage Market here in town tomorrow and it's looking like it will be a beautiful spring day.

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Sunday, March 16, 2014

Come Shop with Me

Want to come along on a vintage shopping adventure? My mom was visiting for a few days last weekend, so of course we had to spend some quality junking time together. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything exciting happening with the yard sales or estate sales, so off to the antique mall we went. After our annual "drop and run" visit with the tax man, we headed over to The Antique Warehouse for a quick look around before lunch. Well, lunch didn't happen until after 3:00 because we got caught up in their newly expanded warehouse annex. Kind of hard to shop with a growling stomach, but it was worth it.

These drawers would have come home with me if I didn't already have a similar set.

I must have spent 15 minutes digging through these rusty letters to come up with MST.
That is a T isn't it? The B sticking out of the box was waving at me, so it came home with
me also.

Made in the USA. Just one more reason to buy them.

Oh my!

Too cute. Not sure what it's hauling though.

How's this for a plate rack?

My very first selfie.

Besties.

How sweet is this?

I forgot to go back and take a second look at this wheel. With a little tweaking, wouldn't it make a great necklace display?

Loved everything in this space.

I almost bought these little drawers.

Then I spotted these just across the hall. They're green, they're metal, they're cool, and they're full of little treasures already. What else did I buy? A few packs of buttons, two vintage towel bars, old paint brushes, four rusty metal letters, three wire shelves, several pieces of silverware for stamping, and some rusty hinges. The damages could have been much worse considering we were in here for well over two hours.