Yard Saling Away

Hello Friends, it's good to have you here!

Finally, the weather has warmed up and yard sales are sprouting everywhere! I had some great luck this past week. I hit a couple of rummage sales Thursday first.

I found a couple of vintage Hawaiian shirts at the first rummage sale- I thought it was going to be a bust for the longest time because I started in the housewares section and there was literally nothing but crap. I scoped out the clothing as a last resort and came up with a couple good ones- they are already listed in my Etsy store here.

I got to another rummage sale later in the afternoon just before it closed. And that means it was bag day- everything I could fit in a paper bag was $2. It also means that stuff was kind of picked over, so I definitely didn't pack the bag full. But I picked up a couple books and puzzles:

Also grabbed these art pieces. The oil painting is another vintage landscape for my collection at our cabin. That is really coming along, and I should probably do a post on that sometime. The empty frame is a simple but elegant art deco picture frame, which I always pick up whenever I find them. So much nicer than the frames they have at Michael's!

The little Hazel Atlas Moderntone sherbet glass was part of the bag sale, as were the cute fork and spatula. The fork is the Corningware Country Festival pattern. The speckled bowls are actually confetti Melmac, and are the first I have ever seen in black and white. Maybe they are "RARE HTF"? LOL  They will be listed in my Etsy store eventually too. 

This was another item I put in my bag- I'm going to let you guess what this is and then show you what we did with it later!

My husband took the kids to our local bike rodeo Saturday morning and I got to go driveway shopping. My son won 2nd place for his age group; I think he hasn't taken off his medal since then. But my prize was these pieces of Guardian Ware. I got all three for $1 each. The roaster is really huge and will bring a nice bit of $$ online.

I got these PBN horses at the same sale- it was a dollar sale, so everything there was $1. So, 5 paintings, $5! I am hoping to sell these as a group, I think they make an amazing "instant collection"!

More from the dollar sale- the Shiny Brites, lampshade and Homer Laughlin bowl. That bowl is the most stunning piece of stoneware I have ever seen. It's got a raised pattern of trees all around it. I don't know much about Homer Laughlin other than Fiesta, but I want to know more about this style. The only bad part is it has a bit of a chip on the rim and a crack there, but will be beautiful holding fruit on the table.

The Ponderosa plates are the only pieces of Pyrex I found. I have never seen the plates before, only the mugs. I'm sure these will go quickly in my Etsy store when I get them listed. The little brass swans were only a quarter; I actually have a couple of these already, they used to be my mother-in-law's.

It is hard to find bakelite radios anymore. I used to see them all the time and now they are definitely few and far between. I bought one a couple of months ago and now found this one- the only ones I've seen in a long time. It's an Admiral- doesn't work, but for $5, will definitely look great on a shelf. The alarm clock was only a quarter and that one works!

So that's the wrap up of my first real good weekend of yard sales, now here's what we did with that mystery item:

It's a bike rack! My husband painted it white and put it on my bike as a Mother's Day present. ;)

Tour of Chez QT- our Living Room

OK, so I've been talking about this for a long, long time. And then I proceed to blabber on and on about thrift finds and Pyrex.... Well, now it's finally here- the living room reveal!

Last year we (OK, me) decided to revamp our living room. Part of this was by necessity, in that we had to move our entertainment center and some other furniture up to our mountain cabin, so we would have living room furniture up there. And it was also necessary to bring up some of the beautiful mid century modern furniture I had stashed away in the basement!

So here is the only "before" shot I could find- the plaid sofa left over from my husband's bachelor days kind of epitomized the entire room. The coffee table got a MCM makeover, which you can read about here.



I did not paint or really change the overall color scheme. Our walls are kind of a terra cotta color and the sofas are still olive green, although they are new and more modern-looking. The rug is the same burnt red color that used to match the drapes, but then I found these amazing deadstock pinch pleat drapes which you can read about here.

So, to start the tour, you come in through our original 1960 three-paned mahogany door. At one time we almost changed it to a more modern door, but I am super glad we decided to keep it. The wood is beautiful; it just glows.

The oak cabinet is a reproduction of a vintage ice box. It doesn't really match the style of the room anymore, but we do need the storage for videos and records. (Yes, records- as you will see I have many radio/record players in this room.) That is a 1946 GE tabletop radio next to the atomic lamp and the two amazing Rosenthal candle holders I got from Dana over at Mid2Mod! The B&W photo is a family piece, as are a couple others in the room. All the photos are B&W because there is plenty of color elsewhere!

On the right of the door is a little nook that is the perfect size for this 1946 RCA console radio. The front flips open, as you can see, to reveal the radio dial. The record player is under the left side of the top. That is a vintage weather station (Bakelite thermometer/ barometer) on top. There is a round mirror up above (see first photo) and I would eventually like to have a hanging modern ceramic light (W. German style) here, but haven't found the right one yet.

To the left of the door is the main living space, with the large window and large sofa backing it. The other sofa is a loveseat, which we had to special order from Rowe, because apparently no one buys loveseats anymore. They just buy a big sofa or sectional and two Lay-Z-Boys, I guess. That is the same coffee table I posted above, it just looks a lot better now with hairpin legs and a Dansk Kobenstyle enamel piece on top!

You can see my favorite photo of FDR and a 48 star US flag there on the left.

Here is a detail shot of all my vintage planters on the window sill. The two on the right are German ceramics, which I collect.

The leaded glass cabinet was inherited from my Grandmother- she had it removed from a house they lived in long ago. It was built in, so some of the sides are a little rough- which is cool with me. I have a couple more radios and vintage electronics in there, as well as my collections of tiki mugs and cocktail shakers on top. They are up there out of harm's way, because normally this room is full of my kids' toys and books. (I had to get up so early to take these photos, before they came down and filled it with their clutter, LOL!) And another radio on the left at bottom, a Zenith black dial chairside.

Continuing around the room is my famous TV-quarium in the corner. It's a 1950 Motorola that I took the guts out of and put an aquarium inside. The clock is a George Nelson repro, and the owl TV lamp with glowing eyes is a fairly recent thrift find.
 

In place of our giant entertainment center we brought up this 1958 Motorola HiFi console, which had belonged my husband's parents. It has the perfect sleek modern vibe and is a great platform for my light up globe and another vintage TV lamp. On the left are two W. German fat lava planters that actually match. I found them separately, almost a year apart. One thing about this living room, almost nothing is new. The only things not vintage here are the sofas and the TV.

If you would keep going at this point, you'd be in our kitchen. I've done a post about that here, although things are significantly different now that I should probably do another post on that! Oh well, stay tuned I guess!

Kreativ Blogger Award

A big thank you to Dana over at Mid2Mod for nominating me for the Kreativ Blogger award! I love her blog and I have learned so much about mid-century design from her posts. If you have a chance, stop on over and check it out! 

As a condition of the award, I am obligated to tell you seven things about myself, so here goes:

1) My "day job" is as a trumpet player and teacher. I went through school intending to be an orchestral musician and only after I graduated with a degree in Music did I realize that I wasn't good enough for that. But I still play and have fun.

2) Since that gig didn't work out as I anticipated, I went back and got a Master's in Museum Science. I was a museum curator for a while until deciding to stay at home with my kids.

3) I definitely do not like standard 9-5 office work, and really hate being told what to do. I am much happier being self-employed!

4) I take great pride in finding and using old versions of new objects. I do all my cooking and household chores with vintage items.

5) One of my first adult collections was vintage radios/phonos (I have at least 12 that I can think of off the top of my head- most work.

6) My favorite color is olive green.

7) If I had the money and a bigger garage I would buy my favorite car- a 1938 Buick Special, like this one:

But this one might be more practical for a family car:

Thrifted Thursday: Pyrex and FireKing

I hope all of you have had a very happy Holiday season and wish everyone a happy New Year!  I got some much needed items, and of course, the kids had quite a haul.

Presents are great, but as you know, nothing makes me happier than thrifting, and getting a deal on something I collect!

Since the kids are off of school this week, I can relax my schedule a bit and get to those places I don't normally frequent because of time or distance. Today I went to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, ostensibly to look for new bathroom sconces for our cabin. Of course, none of those there were right; it was two big shelves of hideous brass and glass fixtures, just like the ones I want to get rid of! But I did browse through the household goods and came back with a couple scores:

I found this Butterprint 442 (1.5 qt.) Cinderella bowl in great condition, for my set for $3. I now have 3 of the 4 - just need the 443 to finish it!

I also couldn't resist these FireKing beauties. I don't collect this pattern (yet!) and don't even know its name, but I adore it! The handpainted flowers are lovely, and the whole set was only $5. It's a big 2 qt. baker, one cereal bowl, two handled ramekins and three tiny custard cups. They don't appear to ever have been used; I wonder what happened to their mates? I can definitely see collecting this one becoming my next obsession!

Living in a Fishbowl

Well, I finally finished my TV-to-fish tank project. For those of you who are long time readers you may remember that I had a 1950 Motorola TV that I bought at a yard sale. It never worked, but the cabinet was nice solid mahogany, the speaker cloth was fine, and I knew it had potential.

I took the guts out of it- that picture tube was heavy! It had a few scratches (OK, gouges) and water marks on the top, so I had to refinish it. After my coffee-table makeover project earlier this summer, I knew this would be fairly easy.

Here's the 'before':

And the 'after'. Came out pretty well! I also restored the knobs with a little elbow grease and some black marker to color in the dial numbers (remember those? LOL).

But that was the easy part. The hard part was finding a fish tank that fit inside and that covered the whole porthole window. I finally found one at a yard sale this weekend for $3. It's actually a hermit crab tank, but it fits great and has a cover. I had trashpicked a filter pump and aerator from our neighbors and two seascape backdrops, so all that went inside as well. At some point I want to find a large black and white still from a vintage TV show to use as a backdrop, so it looks more like the TV is still playing a 1950s show. 

I had to buy some lighting for inside the tank. Since there is very little headroom, I decided to get a string of rope lighting and attached it to the inside upper edge. It's not real bright, but it does the trick- it was more important that the lights didn't get very hot.

We made a shelf out of plywood to fit on the rails that held the TV chassis and slid the new tank in.

It's hard to see, but we have two fish in there- Gomer Pyle and Barney Fife. One fish is white and the other black and white. My son is a huge fan of the Andy Griffith show, so hopefully we'll find a B&W photo from that show that we can use as a backdrop. (We lost our best fish, Nemo, earlier in the week, so he never made the move. RIP, Nemo.)

And lit up at night, with a Helmscene 3D TV lamp on top. (I must have taken 100 pix trying to get a good one, and this is the best of that lot. My camera stinks!) That is a vintage ad for the 1952 version of this TV on the table next to it. I used that for reference when putting the knobs back together.

Nov. 2011 update: I changed the background to a vintage test pattern, and added period rabbit ears and a UHF tuner:

It is definitely cool, and I think just about anyone with an old TV could do it, if I could!

Thrifted Thursday- What's the Frequency Kenneth?

Over the next couple of weeks I will be showing some examples of my radio collection. For a long time I was really into radio collecting, and have quite a few nice pieces. I haven't bought any lately- I guess I just got to the point of having "enough"- and as a matter of fact I think this was the last one I ever purchased.

This is also probably the most expensive item I ever bought in a thrift shop. It's a working Zenith model A515-Y clock radio from about 1958. I paid $50 for it, which I thought was fair but not a steal. I loved the color, and the fact that it had a working clock and radio. It sits on the counter in my kitchen, where I seem to spend most of the evening.

I use it almost every day. There is nothing like waiting for the tubes to warm up and hearing that AM static crackle turn into a baseball announcer's voice. I'm a huge Phillies fan, and when they were playing the last game of the 2008 World Series, I was listening to the game on this radio while watching TV with the sound off. Hearing the legendary Harry Kalas call the last pitch on this old gem just sent chills right through me.