My fiance and I have moved around so much in the past few years...Arizona to New York to Austin back to NY with a pit stop in Orlando....my point is it's been hard to make friends locally because we've had no roots. That's a whole other blog; my actual point is that it has been a character building and inspiring experience overall. I've always loved DIY...I remodeled a townhouse I bought from floor to ceiling when I was 21, I worked at Home Depot for years, I have a mom who can turn trash into treasure-it was going to happen eventually I just needed to be lonely enough to have the time to do it.
When we got back to NY for the second time we had moved so many times, that we had gotten rid of anything that seemed to encumber, clutter, or was too heavy to lift for that matter. So I found myself in a 3 bedroom in Long Island (technically it's two bedrooms but the finished attic counts as a third....shit the closet counts as a bedroom as far as NY real estate is concerned) and hardly any furniture to fill it.
Thus I became a bit obsessed with Craig's List-believe me if IT checked my computer and I was any less skilled at multi-tasking I would most certainly be fired. I began bringing pieces home to David's dismay; he just couldn't understand why I was coming home from work with garbage, some of it even smelly. I have never paid more then $50 for a thing I've brought home, except for one dresser set that had three pieces-it was in my mind it was a justified purchase. That was the first thing I brought home in fact - a dresser set....our clothes were in two living room coat closets, a tiny closet in each guest room, and in shelved cupboards above a hideaway bed in the second guest room. Laundry and getting ready in the morning was a complete nightmare, David's non-to-gentle hands would rifle through the neatly stacked piles on the shelves and wreak havoc on my hours of folding. I knew that it was only a temporary solution when we moved in, and so my dresser search began.
I found this on Craig's List for $150.00:
It came with two dressers, a mirror and a night stand. I bought sand paper, primer, stain, paint, glaze, brushes etc...and began my first DIY project in NY in our sunroom:
After lots of elbow grease, frustration, a Marshall's duvet cover that cost me $20, and a couple adorable vintagy looking flower prints that just happened to match my theme and be on clearance for $5 each; I now had what I think is a beautiful and welcoming guest room; even better a home for our clothes! I finished them in one weekend while David was at work, and then using one of my mom's genius tricks lifted each dresser corner onto a sheet and dragged them from the sunroom/workshop to the guest room and had it all set up when he got home.
He was happy and a little proud-I don't know if it was because I'd found something to fill my lonely weekend or because he had a place for his socks and jeans. Either way I felt so good, and so excited about my next Craig's List adventure that was sure to come....
