Decorating

I don’t consider myself a goodwill expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I do shop there frequently enough to have learned a few tricks of the trade. Of course, this is all based on my own personal experience with the Goodwills in my area. Your Goodwill may operate a little differently.

If you browse Goodwill frequently you can actually find some pretty great stuff there. You have to be persistent though and hit the store often.

Also, all Goodwills are NOT created equal. Shop all the Goodwills in your area until you learn which ones are better and which ones to avoid. Some have better prices than others, some have better stuff. Some carry more furniture while others tend to have more shoes and clothing. Each Goodwill seems to be it’s own little entity.

You do tend to find better stuff at Goodwills in more expensive areas of town, but not necessarily! A Goodwill employee once told me that just because it’s donated to a specific location does not mean it will hit those shelves. Goodwill likes to mix up their stores and send items all over town. I don’t know if there’s rhyme to their reasoning or if it’s totally random.

Also, this is probably useless information, but Goodwill employees are not allowed to shop at their own store location, even off the clock. This way if they see something awesome they can’t snatch it up before a regular shopper has the opportunity to snag it.

When I first moved back to Austin I visited all the Goodwills in my area at least a few times each so that I could get a feel for each store location. I can pretty much tell you which stores to avoid and which ones are worth the trip. When you are shopping at Goodwill, visit a lot of different ones until you know which ones are worth the effort.

I’ve figured out that there’s one Goodwill near me that purchases all of Target’s “salvage” from them, then re-sells it for pretty cheap.

An employee at that Goodwill told me that Goodwill purchases the Salvage from Target by the container (huge bulk box) at a set price. Sometimes they will have really great stuff in there, other times it’s all junk. No matter what’s in the container, Goodwill pays a set price, and they get a pretty great deal on it allowing for pretty great deals to carry over to the customer.

What is Salvage anyway?

Salvage, at least for Target stuff at Goodwill, is anything that Target deems damaged or unable to sell. Sometimes the item is open or the package is damaged. Most of the time though, it’s all the leftover decor from the previous season that never sold on their own shelves. They have to get rid of it to make way for the new stuff.

I have loads of decor in my home that was purchased at Goodwill as part of Target’s “Salvage” container. I found this lamp and separate shade at Goodwill – brand new “salvage” from Target. I scored the lamp for $10 and the shade for $3!

Then, as luck would have it, I found a 2nd lamp at Goodwill the following week! They were out of shades, but in a rare twist of fate I stumbled upon a 2nd matching shade at my local Target on clearance for $6.

The two matching lamps with shades cost me less than $30 total. For BOTH! And they are BRAND-SPANKIN-NEW!

They have since moved to my bedroom (I’ll show you soon, promise!).

I also was able to grab this large down filled pillow from Goodwill “salvage”. I paid about $3 for it. It was brand-new with the tags still attached.

The reason it was deemed salvage is because the stitching had come undone in one spot on the pillow cover. I was able to stitch it up in just a few minutes. It’s now one of our favorites, and certainly most comfortable pillow on our couch.

Remember that King-Sized white duvet I found for $10 at Goodwill?

Brand-new with tags from Target salvage. The cardboard sleeve around the packaging was torn so it wasn’t worthy to sit on the shelves at Target anymore.

If you want to know if a Goodwill near you receives Salvage from any stores, call them and ask! And if they say yes, find out which store the salvage is from and also what day the salvage arrives each week. For my store, the Target salvage is stocked on Wednesday morning, so I try to hit up Goodwill Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning.

Goodwill also has tons of other great stuff that isn’t salvage – it’s just regular ol’ basic stuff people have donated. You have to dig to find the good stuff.

One suggestion I have for you is to put your cash or credit card in your pocket and leave your purse in the car. That way you aren’t fighting with a purse or bag while you are “digging” through the shelves. *edited to add: a commenter pointed out that this might not be the smartest idea. Maybe you should leave your purse at home instead!

Often the items are stuffed to the brim on the shelves. Get in there and move stuff around! Look under platters and boxes. And especially look behind everything! I’ve known of people “hiding” good stuff so they can come back later to get it, so squat down and look behind all the junk on those bottom shelves!

One of my luckiest and most favorite scores at Goodwill are these two Sand Timers. (These are pictured before I windex’d them. They are both perfectly clear now that they are clean.)

I actually found them together on the same day hidden behind a few large items. They were only $2 each if you can believe it! What makes them an awesome find (besides the price) is that Sand Timers are a popular decorating item right now! Pottery Barn and Ballards think sand timers are hot this season.

My daughter went coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs over this little basket. It is the perfect size Laundry Hamper for her American Girl doll. It rang up at $1. I also found a little rocking chair last week for $1.50.

This cute little green dish was only a few bucks and is chip free! I love the color, that’s why I scooped it up.

This gross looking dish was a diamond in the rough. I almost didn’t even pick it up because it was nasty!

I’m glad I did though! Read what store this dish is from:

Because of the name (Pottery Barn) I knew it was probably real silver and could be cleaned up pretty easily. I paid $5 for it (more than I usually will pay, but because it’s from Pottery Barn I forked over a few extra bucks), took it home, and gave it a good buffing with some silver cleaner.

After about 15 minutes of buffing it now looks almost brand spankin’ new.

These two spice racks had me almost jumping up and down. The jars are heavy and are glass, and the lids are a thick metal. Plus the stands themselves are weighted and excellent quality. Getting the spices out was a huge chore, but for only $6 for both racks (and all the jars) it was worth the hassle.

I’ll give you an update soon with pictures, but the spice racks now sit on my desk and house little beads and crafty supplies. You can actually see them behind my Silhouette machine on the desk (under the hutch) in this picture from our office switch post.

One thing I love about shopping Goodwill is the uniqueness of some of their decor. If you like random quirky stuff, you will probably find a more random selection at Goodwill than at any regular store.

I’m drawn to weird stuff, mainly because I like to be unique and have things that you wouldn’t expect mainstream America to own. They are great conversation pieces and in a world full of trends and popularity, I like to feel like I have my own style.

These either-love-them-or-detest-them Animal Heads are all from Goodwill. I washed them and gave them all a quick coat of spray paint.

As is this adorable little Buda (perched on top of my FIRE stand I made two years ago – I still adore this simple easy DIY stand).

Am I Buddhist? Nope. But this little guy was just too cute not to buy!

You really can’t go wrong with a wine bottle that looks like it got run over by a truck.

I had no idea what I’d use it for, but it was weird and random so I just had to have it. I’ve later learned that people make these and use them as cheese platters. Interesting! I paid $1.50.

This last item is actually not from Goodwill but from a garage sale a neighbor of mine was having. She sold me this cute little Banana dresser for only $7. I was so excited because it looks brand-new. I was even more excited when I saw the same dresser at Target (it’s still there for sale if you want one) for $65! My neighbor could have RETURNED the dresser and received a $65 credit, but instead I was able to snatch it up from her for only $7. What a steal!!

I hope I’ve been able to help give you some good pointers about shopping Goodwill. It really is an experience all on its own.

Oh, one more tip. I’ve never actually done this but my sister SWEARS BY IT. She found a Goodwill Outlet Store. Basically it’s a Goodwill for all the crap that no one wanted at the regular goodwill.

At the Goodwill Outlet they sell stuff by the pound! Isn’t that random? My sister will go down there (with several hours to spare) and will literally spend 3 hours sifting through heaps and heaps of clothes. She always comes home with bags full of almost brand new NAME-BRAND clothing for around 50-65 cents an item.

She’s found Banana Republic, GAP, American Eagle, Aeropostale, Abercrombie, Hollister, etc, some still with the original tags. She brought home a Roxy Quicksilver sheet set a few weeks ago! The only drawback to going to the outlet is that you really have to dig and dig and dig to find the good stuff.

She says the reason there are awesome clothes there is because sometimes the employees at the regular store will overprice something, which causes no one to purchase it. Instead of marking these items down, once an item has sat in a store for a certain amount of time it automatically gets shipped to the Outlet.

One last pointer… I know this is getting really long. Sorry! Some locations will have half-off day. If your location does, go there the night before, just before closing and scout out the store. If there’s something you want to try to score for half-off get there at least 30 minutes before opening the next morning and get in line! Hopefully you’ll get lucky!

So, do you have any tips for shopping Goodwill? What experiences have you had while thrifting at Goodwill? The Good and the Bad! Share ‘em all!

PS – I keep forgetting to tell you this! I’m headed to Blissdom and Haven conferences this year. I hope to see you there!

When we moved into this house over a year ago my daughter’s room was a huge football field.

After torturing my poor daughter in that room for 15 straight months, I finally started her much needed bedroom makeover by hanging lots of board & batten and giving the entire room a fresh coat of paint (or 20, but I lost count).

I’ve been at it again this weekend. I really want to tie up all the lose ends of her room and get it done once and for all.

Let’s start with her furniture. She has great furniture. Her matching set has a sleigh bed, a dresser & mirror, a side table, and a large toy chest (4 pieces total). It’s solid wood, perfect for a little girl, and adorable. Initially I planned to paint all of it white, but after lots of debate, the furniture and I have decided to part ways, and here are a few reasons why:

a) the bed doesn’t allow for a trundle under it, and my daughter is the Sleepover Queen.

b) the dresser is too tall, too big, and takes up too much precious floor space for her toys. It also has too many drawers; half of them are completely empty.

c) she really has no use for a side table.

d) the large toy chest was a magnet for kids playing hide-and-seek and made it a little too easy to quickly “clean” her room by piling trash, laundry, and ALL toys into it. Momma didn’t like that at all!

First step in Project Kinsey’s Room? Moving out her furniture to get ready to put on Craigslist.

Of course, now she’s down a dresser. In my opinion, dressers are totally over-rated. I prefer built-ins and shelving in the closet any day over a dresser, especially for children who need the extra floor space to play.

I came up with a simple solution that I think is the bees knees. I drug her bookshelf into her closet and put all her clothing on it. (I’ve also been busy adding stuff to her walls.)

This is the same shelf that she helped put together last year.

Here’s how I organized it:

(The zebra boxes are her Duct Tape Boxes (Tutorial HERE). They have held up amazingly well! They are perfect for her underwear and all her dance clothing. We keep socks downstairs in the mud room.)

And on the other side of her closet:

Stealing the shelf away has now left us with this huge disaster though. Lots of toy storage is now needed (I’ll share the toy storage in the next post.)

A view into her room from the hallway…

(Fluffy coffee filter wreath tutorial can be found here)

The shelf use to be along this wall, but the shelf is now in the closet and I “stole” the sofa table from the game room.

The plan was to get her a cute little dressing table with a mirror, but I opted for the sofa table because (besides the fact that I already own it so it’s essentially free) the sofa table is not as deep as a traditional desk or table and this little space is too awkward for a big protruding desk.

The plan was for a big pretty mirror to hang above so Kinsey can put on her jewelry and spend time primping, but after short consideration I concluded that she owns way too much crap and needed storage in lieu of a mirror.

Ikea to the rescue! I purchased 2 floating shelves (lack) for her room, and it was my lucky day because ikea just lowered the price down to $15 per shelf. Woot!

And now, after they are hung!

What a difference, right?! I’m thrilled with how they turned out. I say “progress” though because the sofa table needs to be painted, more artwork and accessories need to be hung, and my piano bench needs to be returned to my piano room and replaced with a cute little chair for Miss Kinsey to sit on.

(Yellow and Gray artwork of Kinsey above bedroom door, upper left corner of room, can be found here.)

She now {finally} has a place for all those little girlie things that she loves that aren’t exactly toys, but still need a place to call home.

I won’t sugar coat this and lie though, installing those shelves was pretty much a pain in the arse. Apparently ikea changed the design of them from when I bought a longer version for my dining room.

Instead of using basic Phillips Head (plusie) screws under the shelves, they now use Hex screws.

What are Hex Screws? I’m so glad you asked! They are screws that take a Hex bit to tighten them. You can’t use your basic screwdriver, so the shelves come with this little Hex bit to tighten them. Except tightening them by hand is almost impossible unless you are a body builder.

The solution? A $5 trip to Home Depot.

If you put together a lot of assemble-yourself furniture, I highly recommend you purchase a set of Hex bits and a Bit Tip Holder. Heck, I’d purchase a set just to put together ONE piece of furniture. The set is cheap, and made the job so much easier and faster.

To use the Hex Bit set, all you do is find the bit that fits your screw, then insert said bit into the holder.

From there, attach the bit holder to your electric drill.

Now you can assemble your furniture in less than a minute and without pulling a muscle in your arm.

Closet and shelves down…

…toy storage to go…

As soon as I get the toy storage situation under control I’ll be sure to give you an update. After that all I need to do is unload all the furniture on Craigslist, buy a new bed, and accessorize!

I’m really looking forward to getting the room finished. I’ve got a few more little projects up my sleeve too. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to check a room off my list once and for all! Of course, with all this work going on in sissy’s room, big brother Travis is starting to feel a little jealous, so I’ll be starting his room next.

It’s never-ending! Good thing I LOVE IT.

I hope you have a great MLK day and an even better week!

This weekend Ben and I FINALLY got around to mounting our TV on the wall.

Mounting a TV on a wall (and concealing all the cords) is really not that hard. And it only took us about an hour or so. So, remind me again why it took us year and a half?

Oh rrrright. Because I’m the President of the Procrastinators Club. I even added this project to my to-do list, and I still put it off another 5 months. Shame.

Okay, so here’s the eye sore before we tackled this afternoon project:

If there’s one thing Sarah and I have in common, it’s our general loathing of power cords.

Every time I walk to my bedroom, the laundry room, or the garage, I’m greeted by that horrible disaster of cords. I’ve got permanent hives and a twitch in my left eye just from seeing that monstrosity several times a day for a year and a half.

But check it out NOW! No more cords! All is right in the world.

I’m going to give a quick run-thru on how to hang the tv and run the cords through the wall, but honestly, if you just follow the directions that come with the mounting kit you will be just fine.

First thing you need to do is buy a mounting kit. You can get the exact same one at Amazon for about 70 bucks.

To mount the TV you will need to attach brackets to the back of the TV and a large mounting bracket to the wall.

We laid the TV face down to attach the brackets. AFTER we were totally finished Ben googled whether you are suppose to lay a plasma tv flat on the ground. Apparently you are not. Whoops. Probably should have googled BEFORE we started. Ours still works just fine, but you may want to keep your TV upright when you attach the brackets to the back of it. Just sayin. Don’t sue me if you lay your TV flat on the ground and it explodes or something.

There should be some screws on the back of your TV plugging the holes where the kit goes. Remove them.

Here are the holes after we removed the 4 screws.

Using the hardware that came with the kit, mount the brackets onto the backside of the TV.

(The kit came with 2 sets of brackets – one to mount the TV very close to the wall and one to mount it a little further out, but gives the ability to tilt the TV. We initially used the brackets that make the TV sit closer to the wall, but the cords didn’t fit, so we swapped the brackets out for the 2nd set. All the photos you see are the smaller set, but if you do this yourself please be aware that we ended up using the tilting brackets.)

You are now ready to mount the big daddy bracket to the wall.

Do not be intimidated. This is easy!!

First, locate the studs in the wall. You want the bracket to be bolted directly to the studs. Otherwise it will probably fall out of your wall and break your TV. No worries though! Finding the studs is easy!

If you don’t have a stud finder (I don’t b/c I’m too cheap to spend like 20 bucks on one), all you have to do is nail a small nail into the wall. If it goes in easily, there’s no stud. If it is hard to hammer in, you’ve hit a stud. Pretty easy. So just take your nail and hammer it every inch down your wall until you hit a stud.

Once you’ve located a stud, it’s even easier to find the 2nd one. If your house is built to code, your studs will be exactly 16″ apart from the center of one stud to the center of the next stud. This is called “16 inches on center”. Also, studs are made from 2×4′s, so your studs will all be exactly 1.5″ wide. Make sure you find the center of your stud.

Once your studs are all located and marked with a pencil on the wall, hold up your bracket, use a level to make sure it’s level, and use a pencil to mark all the holes where your bolts will go. Now remove the bracket and drill a pilot hole into the center of each of your bolt markings, like this:

Once your holes are drilled, put your bracket back up and bolt that bad boy to the wall. If you managed to find all 4 studs and bolted directly into the stud, your 4 bolts will be plenty to keep your tv mounted and safe.

Now double check to make sure everything is level.

Oh man, are we good or what?!

Your mounting kit is officially ready to go. Now the real fun begins. Let’s run those cables through the wall!!

To hide your cords, all you have to do is cut two holes in your sheetrock and drop them through the wall. It’s really easy as pie.

Start by cutting your top hole. Cut it inside the bracket area to make sure it’s well hidden once your TV is mounted.

Once the first hole is cut, you will cut your second hole about a foot off the ground directly below the first hole.

Don’t be scared. Sheetrock can totally be patched if you botch it up.

If you are dropping cables through an interior wall (meaning it isn’t a wall that has the outdoors on the other side of it), there will probably be no insulation inside your wall making it even easier to drop the cables. If you are mounting your TV on an exterior wall (the other side of the wall is the great outdoors) you will probably have to push through insulation to get your cables through the wall.

All you need to do now is shove those cords through the wall. But wait! There’s a really easy way to do this. It’s called Steel Fish Tape.

This is Steel Fish Tape:

It’s a thin flexible piece of steel (kind of like a tape measure but more sturdy) that comes on a roll. You unroll a bit of it and “fish” it through your wall. Here, I’ll show you. It’s easier than trying to explain it.

Shove the end of the Fish Tape through the top hole in the wall…

…and then pull the end out through your 2nd hole in the wall.

Use tape or whatever you can find and attach your cables to the end of the Fish Tape.

Now just wind the tape back up and pull the cords right on up through the wall. So easy!

I seriously get giddy when I have a chance to use the Fish Tape. It is fun feeding random stuff through your walls.

Now that you’ve got your cords hidden in your wall, plug them all into the back of your TV. From there, lift the TV up and hook it onto the mounting bracket.

You are done!

No more cords. No more ugly!

Woot Woot!

I’m releived I can finally check off another project from my daunting to-do list.

Do you have your TV mounted on your wall? Did you do it yourself or hire a professional?