The Treasure Chest Desk

 

I do most of my furniture shopping—well practically ALL of my furniture shopping on craigslist.  And I have made out with some pretty awesome deals in the past.  But this one wins over all—not because the piece itself is the best but because it has the best story behind it.

I was looking for a desk for my son’s room in our new house and found this cute desk on craigslist and they were asking only $5!! 

A $5 desk IS an amazing deal.  But the deal got even better when I arrived to pick up the desk and the lady selling it asked me if I would like to take the matching chair for no extra charge!

 I couldn’t believe it.  A solid wood desk AND chair for $5.  (It was old—but built like a tank and in good condition!)

The gal selling the desk was selling off items from the estate of someone who had died and had cleaned out most of the drawers but had forgotten the top one.  When we noticed it was still full of stuff she told us she was just going to throw the stuff in the dumpster and asked us if we wouldn’t mind taking care of it.  For a $5 desk and chair?--NO PROBLEM!

Then—just when we thought the deal couldn’t be any better—we went to clean out this drawer and found MANY treasures.

We found:

• A couple collectors coins (some valued for around $60 each)
• Several pocket knives--some that were antiques like this one:
• A very old $2 Bill
• An old quill pen
• A gold emboss seal kit (you know the kind of thing they used to seal letters with in the olden days)

And lots of other neat office/desk stuff.

It was just like a treasure box.  At first I felt bad that we had paid so little for the desk and felt like we should take back all the neat stuff—but as my husband reminded me that the lady was just doing her job by getting rid of the stuff and was going to throw it all in the dumpster without even looking at it. 

So after that I don’t feel very bad about it anymore. 

I just feel AWESOME about it.

Tomorrow I will show you what I did with the desk to turn it from Old and Girly—to Hip and Manly.