Thrift Store Addict Knows: I'll Share With You EVERYTHING!!!!

Welcome to my Blog "Thrift Store Addict Knows". Maybe you're asking "What does she know?" I know a lot about thrift stores & shopping them. I label myself a "Thrift Store Addict" with no HOPE or DESIRE of recovery. I love thrift store shopping.

My goal is to visit a new thrift store every week or so & write a review on it. I will share with you what I find & my impressions of the shop. I'll tell you where they are, their hours & what I find out about special sales & events they may have.

I'll also share with you things that I do in my thrift store adventures. What to take & what not to take. I'll also share about yard sales & estate sales. I'll share with you everything. I won't hold back. I want you to have fun & be successful, just like me!!

Now, let me tell you a little about me. I'm the mother of 5 grown children. Funds were tight at times in the beginning & I learned to bargain hunt & make do with what we had. I mended, altered, & passed down clothes & toys & whatever. I was having yard sales on my own when I was 12 years old. I'm an empty nester now with lots of time on my hands. I love to volunteer, travel with my husband, go out to eat, craft, recycle, bake and once in a while I'll even cook.

When we travel I always Google thrift stores when planning our trip. I make sure thrifting is on our itinerary. The husband expects to stop at a couple no matter where we go or how we get there. I keep notebooks organized by states & the stores we've been to. I collect business cards & make notes about the stores, their inventory & what I thought about it. I'll go to Palm Springs with a BF for a 2-3 day girls get-away & we'll hit every thrift store out there. (I've got them ALL mapped out!!!)

I believe everything has at least 2 lives. I will buy an item just because I like it. I don't have to have a need for it, an idea for it or any reason to buy to it. I just have to like it. When I buy a piece of furniture, I have to live with it till it tells me what to do with it. Here are a few of my purchases, before & after.

This is a vintage sewing cabinet. I paid about $55 for it. My Mom had one just like it when I was a little girl. She'll be 93 on Valentine's Day. All I did was clean it up & put cute mis-matched knobs on it. I was looking for a new taller night stand for months with no success. I bought this just because I HAD to have it. A couple days after I got it home I was looking at it & I measured how tall it was. The perfect height for my night stand!! TOO CUTE & I think of MOM often when I look at it.

I seem to pay $4-$5 for a lot of my pieces of furniture. This vintage child's rocker was less than $5. It came with the cane seat broken. I researched recaning & did it myself. It took me over 30 hours to clean the old glue, reed spline & cane out. That was quite a job. (Caning supplies was under $20.) Sanding, filling, painting & re-caning was the easy part. Than I gave it to a very happy little 3 year old girl.

Charlie, the rocking horse & this table are my favorite make-overs. This was a $4 tilt-top-table. I changed it to a locked top, painted it & made a shadow box-type top. There's rope around the side, than shells. I glued sand on top. (I collect sand from beaches around the world.) Than seashells & other things I've collect on those beaches. I had a piece of glass cut to place on top. "Husband" doesn't want me to sell this one. It stays in my "beach guest room" for now.

This dresser was $4.83. The paper & knobs were less than $10. I had the paint.

I even lined the drawers with '70's paper!! Groovie!! ($50)

I brought this table back from Sandy, Utah. I paid $5 for it. It sat in the garage for about 2 years. I decided to do a mosaic top when I found a windmill tile trivet at a thrift store for $1. I painted it sunshine yellow & finished it with small tiles in metallic blues & broken tiles in white & medium blue. ($45) SOLD

This is my "anniversary dresser". I told husband about this find as we were heading out to dinner for our 34th anniversary. We had stopped for gas & he said "Let's go get that dresser before dinner". When I was cleaning it I pulled out the top right drawer & on the left side I found written in pencil

"Bought March 31, 1885 at Mitchell from G. Doty".

I got very emotional wondering where this piece started & how it got to the thrift store in Orange, California for me to buy on February 10, 2013. It was at least 128 years old when I bought it.