When I tell people what I do three or four days a week, visit the swap shops and store my "stuff" in a garage and a storage unit, they think I am a bit off. I tell them that I must go to the dumps every day they are open or I must be the founding member of "DA" otherwise known as Dumps Anonymous!
For those of you who are reading my blog and do not know the origin of my passion, I will give you a bit of the history. I bought my cottage in 2005 and furnished it with yard sale and thrift shop finds. One day when I was getting my hair cut, I mentioned to my hairdresser that I was needing an iron. She asked me if I had been to the "Treasure Chest". I asked her what that was. She explained the swap shop philosophy here on the Cape. Our transfer stations, or land fills, are full and every community on the Cape has to haul their trash to western Massachusetts and pay by the pound for it to be dumped. In order to save money, each dump has a section of their grounds dedicated to a swap area or swap building for people to drop off what they no longer need or want but that is still working for others to take. This saves the communities hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
I found my iron and my new path after retirement. In the years since then we have renovated and furnished five houses and worked with local Realtors to stage listings of theirs to better show the homes and hopefully appeal to a broader audience. Along the way we have discovered that when we work with a realtor and have a realtor's open house at the same time we have our estate sale, to sell the furnishings we have saved and rehabbed, we get more foot traffic and more exposure for the listed house. In many cases our sale brought in the ultimate buyer.
Just one days finds.
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A Before and After
Our first rehab using finds from the swap shops. The drapes are new and the couch is the same, everything else in this living room came from the dump: lamps, art work, furniture, material for slip covers, the Pottery Barn slip cover for the couch, everything...amazing.
Here is the final result...
A good upholstery tip to remember: look for stain resistant tablecloths on sale. The seat covers are Ralph Lauren tablecloths gotten for about $2 a yard.
Another tip: prime and spray paint old knobs. when the paint cures they are good as new and can save you tons of money. I used my old knobs from my PA kitchen for the cottage.
Perhaps my favorite up cycling done in the cottage was this chandelier. I had it rewired just to be safe. Primed and spray painted it white and glazed the leaves a light green to give it some depth but not too much color.
Hung and ready to shed light on a dinner party!
Here are just a few examples of the final products now living a new life in my cottage.
These barrel chairs just needed to be reupholstered.All my dishes, glasses, and most of my serving pieces have come from the dump. I look for good design, color and vintage items.
I have started to collect colored bottles whenever I find them at the dumps.
This little guy, "an educational souvenir" from Memphis, Tenn. was one of my first finds.
Vintage pieces such as this towel bar and Victorian purse just make me happy. All I had to do to the towel bar was sand, tape and spray the metal parts white. Saw a similar one on Etsy for $135. Now that is ridiculous!
This Hadley covered dish was a dump find. It tells you that the dish is empty with the words The End printed on the bottom. That will be my cue to end this blog entry, don't want to bore you with too many of my "finds". Let me just say that it give me great joy to save these "finds" and to use them each and every day. I have not included most of what I have saved, you will just have to come visit to see it all.
