Monday Thrift Store Scores

....Here i am at the buzzer, breathless and hoping to post this before Monday is over!

Xmas in July ~ literally! This was thee HUGEST shelf elf I've found to date; he's probably 8" sitting.... The plastic canisters I've been using for craft junk, as there was only 2 and they have minor cracks down the back. But I love the clear windows.

 Royal Haeger Virgin Mary planter. I love how this is all white and so smooth, yet in real life like this photo, the shadows show the details. I'm not even particularly religious. The Ferdinand Bull is another very smoothly cast planter, with airbrushed like coloring, and a dent in his head (for a pipe? maybe he's an ashtray?)

 I know you all don't think I deserve anything else Hall-Mack, given what I fell into with this house, but we don't have any of the recessed t.p. holders and it's IN THE BOX NO LESS. It's being saved for the main (blue) bathroom for when we re-do it. (not re-do it in the sense of gutting it, rather adding more Hall-Mack to it and replacing a crappy paint job on the amoeba shaped vanity with formica and chrome). This was actually an estate find that Partner-In-Crime was educated enough to grab! :)

And the grand finale... these were a Goodwill find. The whole set for $3. I nearly fainted. It was one of those things where I walked around the store clutching them for dear life for fear that someone would steal them from me because I was just dizzy from the find. I NEVER EVER thought I would find these in a thrift or even estate sale. Granted, I have the set that I bought on Ebay (when that guy in Illinois or wherever flooded the market with them a few months ago) but we have 2 doors into the house, so .... I don't feel guilty. Plus Rejuvination are coming out with their repros soon so everyone will have a chance to have some! :P

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Well there it is! A Monday Thrift Store Score post from me! Look in  the sky for pigs flying and check Hell, for it's surely frozen over tonight!  The sad thing is, there's more but I left my camera at the store for Etsy photos.

Did everyone come out safe and relatively unscathed by Hurricane Irene? I hope so! We are fine, my county got hit a little bit, there are tons of trees still down and streets are blocked, still. But we never lost power or had any flooding issues or anything. Whew. Did anyone else on the east coast experience that earthquake last Tuesday? That was crazy! I got such a kick out of it because I never thought I'd experience an earthquake like that, ever. I was getting tattooed at the time it hit (!!) and it was so weird, it lasted over a minute and the building didn't shake like I thought it did in an earthquake ~ it didn't shake from side to side, rather the floor seemed to be going up and down. I don't think we'll get anything that hard again for 100 years so I'm still thinking it was pretty awesome to feel.

Ok this was a pretty decent blog entry considering..! Thanks for sticking with me during the lull!

xo

stacey

Roman Holiday

I'm indeed alive! I know it's been a very long time since I've blogged and my only excuse is extreme busy-ness.  The mini-mods have complicated and extensive social lives and it feels like my sole purpose in life right now is that of a gypsy cab driver. By the end of the day, when I used to enjoy my own quiet time for web surfing, blogging, or online shopping, I'm finding myself face down in a pillow crashed out cold.

First things first... recent finds!

2 "House and Home" magazines circa 1952 and 1957

These appear to be geared towards home building companies and contractors. There are ads, articles and stats. I find them fascinating but haven't had a chance to properly read them in full.  Here are quick photos, I will be scanning the better bits soon.

Nu Tone ad

2 pages spread of kitcheny goodness

i can't wait to read this and actually scan it to post.

we have this in the basement! our plumbing & heating guy calls it the "monster".

hnnnnnnng starburst escutcheon.

more gorgeous locksets

and my love of loves ... hall-mack !

Second things second ... I am getting ready to leave for Italy today ~ we are flying into Milan tonight with a trip later on in the week down to Rome. I'll be gone for 10 days. I'm not looking forward to this, as horrible as that sounds. I just feel that I have way too much stuff to do around here to be jetting off to Italy. HOWEVER I did learn that there is a huge outdoor flea market in Rome on Easter Sunday so I'm stoked about that. Fingers crossed that I find very cool smalls to bring home. :)

See everyone in 2 weeks, thereabouts.

Funny Story of How Sometimes Your Holy Grail is Right In Front of Your Stupid Face

To add to the bevvy of small catastrophes last week, my washing machine chose to act up and wouldn't go through it's drain & spin options. It's a brand new, front-loading HE [energy efficient] washer (and I have a mile long list of why no one should ever buy this type of washing machine, EVER) that is computerized.  There are some sort of sensors that pick up on how heavy the wash is and how many minutes it should go through it's cycle. Long story short, I'm finding the sensors aren't accurate and it's tripping itself up, shutting down mid-wash and like a computer - it won't do ANYTHING unless you unplug the whole machine (aka reboot) and start all over. I wasn't happy.

The plug for the washer is behind it, and off to the side. To unplug it, I have to step up on a small table, lean over the top of the washer and yank. To the right of it is the laundry room sink with a towel bar above it. The whole set-up is something I look at every day, 15x a day without giving any of it much thought.

So the other night as I was furiously rebooting my washing machine, I noticed that something looked off with the towelbar over the laundry sink. I've only used this bar to hang up cleaning rags, etc. There are separate bars higher up in the space for drip-drying clothes so this bar is purely utility.

I must of bumped or rubbed against it trying to get to the outlet because lo and behold....

HNGGGGGGG. It's the Hall Mack Double Space-Booster Bar that has been hiding in plain sight and that I literally did not even know that we had or even think about checking it for oh...I don't know... the FIVE YEARS WE'VE BEEN HERE.

Which completely proves the point that these inventions were founded on, doesn't it? Hideaway space savers that are 100% functional when you need them to be.

This type of bar has been on my mental "wish" list. Clearly this one has been neglected and you can see that it has some tarnish and paint on it. No worries~! The brackets on these are easy to remove and now I have the plan to take it down and clean it up for use in one of the bathrooms - probably to replace the ceramic bar in the main bathroom. I'm so excited over this project, fingers crossed that it goes as smoothly as I hope.


...and the washing machine has since stopped being fussy. For now. :)

The Master Bath aka the "Seahorse Bathroom"

Every day I thank our lucky stars that this bathroom wasn't gutted ~ it came so close! The Real Estate agent almost had the original owner convinced that NO ONE would want a bathroom like this and would see it as a project and get turned off. When we "Squeeee!"-ed at the seahorse tiles, gushed over the Hall-Mack vanity shelves, and got perplexed, then hysterical over the Hall-Mack Relaxation Unit, it was just another reason the original owner wanted us to get this house. We appreciated the little things in ridiculously huge ways.

I don't use this bathroom unless it's an emergency pee break. Since it's off the master bedroom, I initially tried to make it my everyday bathroom but truth be told, the shower is only a stall (albeit a large stall, but... ladies you know how it is) and the overhead lighting isn't conducive to face-fixing either.  This bathroom is perfect Partner-In-Crime size and functionality, so up went the nonfogging shaving mirror, the gorgeous vanity shelves are lined with boy things, and the relaxation unit holds tattoo magazines for the extra manly touch.

The sink and cabinet were re-done at some point, and it is too large for the room itself, so it is on the list of things to take out, and we are checking local Re-Store shops for the perfect matching pedestal sink to replace the current monstrosity. That bathroom is so small it doesn't need it's own cabinet, I just bring the bucket of cleaners in from the  main bathroom when it needs a scrub.

 

seahorses on flecked tile. the colors are sand with darker brown flecks, cream & tan.  these seahorse tiles are randomly placed all over the shower wall.