Secondhand Surplus

Sunday, October 24, 2010

A little bit o' Belleville
















Being a business owner, my husband works a pretty crazy schedule. The bad side can be late nights, late mornings. The good side of it, is that with his crazy schedule, most people work a 9-5, and can't go thrifting on a beautiful Friday, Autumn afternoon. But we can.

The first and last photo are of a sofa that we found and left at the salvation army in Belleville.
We found this beautiful velvet purple sofa at our first stop of the day, and its hard to pack your car full knowing that there are many more shops to come. I stated my love and then turned a cold shoulder after asking a worker when the mark downs were taken. I thought maybe working a deal would convince my better half that we were walking away from a beautiful deal.(my husband pretended not to notice that whole conversion, and I know that main stream thrift store don't make deals, but I also know that those same places do mark downs at a certain point, and not always on time.) We walked away.

The next stop was one not on our agenda, and proved to be one of the best stops of all. Not due to them handing out bucket loads of cash at the door, but the good/fair prices and the wonderful employees.

We purchased a huge 4'x4' original painting, and when they found we were interested in this huge painting they took us upstairs and let us sift through a whole lot of his work, and said since we appreciated his work we could have them for 2 bucks a piece.

Those are the two pieces that I poorly photographed.

The next photo, is the beautiful art neuvo bowl we found at this little place that was marketed as a thrift store, but upon entrance was more of a secondhand bad furniture type store. The first thing upon entrance was a HUGE black panther coffee table with a glass top, marked "sold". I knew there wasn't going to be much there to interest me, but with there only being the owner working I hate to turn around at the door.

I spotted a beautiful bowl, grabbed it, noticed it was priced $15 and the owner said, I'll do $7.

That's all I wanted, grabbed it, said thanks and goodbye.(Baby J doesn't do well at those kinds of places, resale with toys in sight are always the best bet.

I did a little google search and found my new bowl made in Germany, produced in 1929, was listed on an auction site, estimated cost being 400-600 dollars. Not bad.

And last but not least, the beautiful mid century purple velvet sofa, that made my heart hurt. We left it where we found it, and I tried to get my mind off of it.

My Husband went to work early the next morning, to come home with the most beautiful surprise. The couch cost nothing compared to new sofas, but the fact that he knows me well enough to know, the a new purple sofa will give him an uninterrupted evening of football viewing!


(I'm not sure what happened to the last half of my type, sorry.)

6 comments:

  1. Nice sofa! And it looks like it splits so you can make a corner piece out of it with a table between. I'm kinda confused about where the paintings were found. Was it at a thrift shop or an art shop or what?

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  2. The sofa is fabulous and the new artwork looks great above it. Great finds!

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  3. i work in Belleville, and I was wondering where you went. also, if you need some more ideas on places to stop, I can give them to you. There are some great hidden treasures there.

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  4. Sorry, I should have explained. We got the art at the Taco Shop. Its a little thrift store that just happened to get the art donated by the artist.

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  5. Oh my word, I want to marry that sofa! SO gorgeous!

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  6. Sonrie,I would love other suggestions of places to go in belleville, we love to hop in the car and take drives.
    Stephanie, thanks for the couch compliment, I just love it and for 50 bucks you can't go wrong!

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