Spotted: Goodwill

I managed to skip the house for a tiny little bit last weekend sans kids to head to one of my local Goodwill stores.  They were having a BIG (and rare) furniture sale and I've been looking for a few pieces so how could I not?  Well, I didn't find any furniture I needed but I found a couple of other things I brought home.  And, like I sometimes do (check my 'Spotted' label in the sidebar) I snapped some pictures of things I thought had lots of potential to hopefully inspire you to go out and find those diamonds in the rough.  :)

My stores here always have TONS of baskets.  This one caught my eye:

It falls more under the tray category maybe but it'd be a great one to sit atop a coffee table or the corner of your kitchen counters.  Minus the handles, it looks a lot like this $40 tray from Crate & Barrel.

I saw this wood lattice square* on clearance at Target a few months ago and whadya know? 

One found its way to Goodwill!  It's meant to be hung on a wall but you could dress up some plain cabinet doors or dresser drawers by using this as an overlay.  The dimensions would have to be right but can you imagine how pretty that would be?  It could look something like this dresser, albeit a larger design.  You'd have to cut the square in parts so that the drawers would open and then nail and glue the whole thing to the fronts and possibly paint but gosh, heart eyes.  Shoot.  Now I'm regretting not getting it...

It's hard to see this shelf in the picture but, because it was behind so much other big furniture, I couldn't get a good shot. 

It was probably as long as I am tall and I think, with the 50% off sale, it was $5-10...I can't remember.  Either one is great for that big of a shelf!  The brackets alone are worth more than that!  It reminded me a little of the shelves we built into our second house.

Swing arm lamps have a special place in my heart.  

This one was a tad shiny but with a little bit of sanding or a coat of spray paint, it'd make a grand reading nook even more grand.  Pssst...check out the almost identical swing arm lamps from Goodwill I rehabbed here.

Right next to the swing arm lamp was this pretty little sconce:

It was old and the patina was so very pretty.  It be the perfect light to place right over some built-ins like so or spotlighting a kitchen sink area like this.

One of the things on my list to find is a wall clock.  I didn't find one the right size or style but I found a whole stack of large ones that all of you modern farmhouse-loving people would probably love.  :)

Had I a fairy godmother, I'd have asked her to enlarge this one about six inches for me.  The wood tone was beautiful even if the shiny gold strip could've used a little sanding to take it down a notch.

 

Thrift stores are my favorite places to find frames.  This one was massive and had a nice mat and all!  

 

It would be the star of the room with a coat of paint and some new art.  (P.S.  Here's a tutorial showing how you can open up frames like this that are covered in paper on the back so that you can swap out the artwork inside.  :)  Easy peasy.

This clam shell floor lamp was cute.

It's that shiny brass, once again, so it would need some sanding or a coat of spray paint but, it's another reading nook winner.

I really wanted these one of these lights.

I'm pretty sure they're originally Ikea (can anyone back me on that?) but they're just so fun.  However, they were massive.  Just one would have made a fun addition to our kids' playroom...if they didn't almost take up the entire room.

Forget those metal, tiered, cheapy shoe racks.  Dress up your front door with something like this slatted wood shoe rack:

Form in the natural texture addition of wood and function for keeping all of those shoes off the floor.  :)

I think this was a Nate Berkus candle holder originally hailing from Target (yep, and Google told me about another one being sold on eBay) but with some paint (or maybe just a good sanding to get it down to the natural wood) and a hole drilled into the bottom into which a light kit* could fit, it'd make a great pendant light.

 Home organization anyone?  This wood organizer would be a great place to store...well, almost anything.  Cans/spices/oils/vinegars/bottles in the pantry, toilet paper rolls in the bathroom closet, remotes in the living room, handheld tools in the shed, etc, etc, etc...

You know I have a love for pillows, right?  I have a whole shop dedicated to making them pretty, didn't cha know?!  Well, knowing that you can toss pillows into a washing machine to wash them, buying cheap pillows like this big 'ole down one (actually, there were FOUR) and then buying covers for them is a really affordable way to get pillows that look like they came straight from a high-end designer, right into your living/bed room for much, much less than that designer price. 

 Calling all Magnolia fans, I saw this book:

Used books are awesome but it can take a good amount of time to search them to find the good ones.  I usually don't have that time but if you do, get yourself to a thrift store and find all the books.  They're there, waiting.

This rug:

It was pretty matted and dirty but oh my, that tassel trim on the end, right?!  It was amazing.  I don't know of a way to fix matted rugs but I know that in places like a screened-in porch where you don't necessarily want a super nice rug, these kids of rugs (after they're cleaned, of course) can really cozy up a space.  (P.S.  My go-to way to clean a large area rug is to lay it out on a sunny part of our driveway, saturate it with the hose, dump laundry detergent onto it, let the kids "scrub" it into the rug by dragging their (clean) little feet all over (kind of like skating), rinsing again with the hose, and then hanging it over our patio chairs in that same sunny spot to dry.)

And we're back to the baskets.  I thought this basket would be cute to set a plant potted in a plastic pot into. 

I like that detail towards the top.  It gave it a little extra special somethin'.  Anthropologie-esque, right?  And a plastic pot isn't all that pretty but they're cheap and covered up with a basket like this?  Who even needs to know it's there?

In the end, I bought a huge cutting board (it's one of those boring white ones) and this: 

It was as dirty as can be with marker and paint all over it.  But, it's wood and heavy and I immediately saw it and knew it would be a much better place to store my kids markers and art paper, much better than the large basket they've been using to just throw allthethings into over the past year.  So, with a good scrubbing with a few Lysol wipes, a quick few coats of spray paint, and some changing of the frames up front (pictures over some scraps of fabric), we now have a much better organization station atop the kids' art table in the library:

I know that in choosing white paint I'm just asking for it to get all scuffed up and marred with Crayola but it's ok.  There will always be more white paint.  ;)

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