My $25 Piano

I’m taking a little brake from curtain week today to tell you about an AMAZING DEAL I got a few months ago!  (This one is for you Tracy!!)

Until recently I have never owned a real piano.  For the last 12 years I have had this beautiful little electric piano (and just pretend you don’t see my new piano in the background).

Now this little electric piano has been SO WONDERFUL over the past 12 years.  It was more than just a keyboard—it really was like a mini piano—but it was light weight and easy to move around when we were moving from place to place and had lots of cool features.  I LOVED this thing.  I even made this little cover for it so it wouldn’t get dusty.

But as my family is getting older and we aren’t planning on moving houses again, And our piano teacher was telling us that we really needed something with weighted keys—we decided it was time to look for a real piano.

After weeks of searching on craigslist I found this piano listed for $150!!!

After looking on line forever—I knew this was a good deal.  So we marched on over and bought it.

After it sat in our home for a few weeks we had it tuned and the tuner guy couldn’t believe how much I bought it for!  He told me it would have been a great deal if I had got it for double the price.  But at that price, it was a steal!

And then to make me even happier—I put my little electric piano on craigslist and sold it for $125!!!

So—that means that in the end I spent $25 on this little beauty!

And now with my own piano, I feel all grown up.

The Making of a Manly Desk

As I promised yesterday, here is the redo of our Treasure Chest Desk and chair.

It started off looking very old and very girly.

But this desk was for my 11 year old son.  So we needed to modernize it and give it some testosterone.

So before you start any wood working project—you should always prep your surface for painting.  Usually that means SANDING.  I HATE SANDING.  Like with a passion.  But I wanted a good paint job .  So I tried the cheaters route and used this:

I put a little on a cloth and wiped it all over the surfaces of the chair and the desk.  To be honest—I have no idea if it worked well or not.  The paint job turned out great so I guess it didn’t hurt it.  I really should have tested one drawer front with it and one without to have a side by side comparison.  But I didn’t.  So for now we will all just pretend that it worked great and I didn’t waste $6 on this stuff.

Next came the paint.  First we put on our very attractive spray painting masks which my husband makes me wear because of the massive amounts of spay painting I do.  He doesn’t want me losing any more brain cells than I already have.  He shouldn’t worry, I don’t have much to lose!

I found the perfect color of spray paint for this boys desk.  It is a dark grey and it happened to come in the Rust-oleum ultra 2x the coverage in gloss.

The gloss part was not my favorite.  But sometimes you have to sacrifice your finish of choice to get your color of choice.  And I do LOVE the color.

And can I also say that I LOVE the double the coverage paint.  This is the first time I had used it and I am in LOVE!!!  It really means what it says about double the coverage.  What normally would have taken a billion coats and 12 cans of spray paint (ok…I exaggerate.  But it would have taken a lot) took 2 light coats and only 3 cans of paint for both the chair and the desk—and I still had some left over!)

So here is the chair:

Before:                                             Middle:

 

After:

And then came the drawers: (Sorry about the shadowy pictures in my garage)

Before:

Middle:

Spraying the hardware with some ORB:

And After:

Then I took some scrap book paper and made some drawer liners for him in fun colorful prints:

 

And ta-da.  A very masculine looking desk for a very deserving 11year old.

Next time I will give you a tour of his new room and a breakdown of how much it all cost. 

That should be fun!

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.