Garage Sale Domination

Since moving into the new house we have wanted to hit up some garage sales on a Saturday. It took a few weekends to have the time to do so, but man oh man did we make out big! I’ll put it this way…when was the last time you had to go home and unload the car (ahem…jeep) to be able to go back and fit the rest of your garage sale finds in the car? Yup, we totally did. And we made out like bandits! I put together an excel sheet (did you expect anything less?) of our finds, including what they asked, what we paid, the retail value, and the percentage saved. I included the spread sheet at the end of the post for those who are interested in the details. For those who aren't…we got $691 worth of stuff (that’s a pre-tax figure) for $155. I call that a win.

I wasn't sure how many garage sales we would find, but there were plenty. We first went to an estate sale which was a little disappointing, given that everything in the house was for sale. I did pick up this old gin bottle for a relative since that is their drink of choice. I thought it was pretty cool and I’m hoping she will appreciate it!

At the next garage sale I saw this easel for $15!!!! An easel like this is about $100 and we put in the sun room where it is just waiting for a cool piece of art to hold. Love love!

They also has a really cool light at this garage sale for only $10 kinda like this this which I really liked, but there isn't anywhere in the house for it to go so I sadly left it there for someone else.  One thing we did really well with was not buying things we didn't need just because they were a good price.

We found these two coolers for $2 each which is something we've been looking for but didn't really want to spend the money on.

Our next stop was a little funny because it was at a house we actually looked at buying when we were house hunting. The Engineer was a little nervous about stopping because we had run into the owner when we were there looking at the house and didn't want it to be weird. I convinced him that we should stop though because a few things had already caught my eye and thank goodness we did because that was a jackpot stop!

We bought a wheel barrow (one of the items The Engineer specifically wanted to find at a garage sale), an 8 foot fiberglass step ladder (another awesome score!), a small outdoor table, a box of dollar tools that The Engineer snagged a few items from, and a gas can.

This was a great stop not only because we got a number of items we were looking for, but we also got a nice bulk price. The asking price at the garage sale for this stuff was $52 and we got all of it for $40…retail value...$253!!! Not kidding! This was about the time we reached critical mass. We already had the easel in the jeep and we now wanted to add a wheel barrow and 8 foot ladder! It probably took about 20 minutes of re-arranging, and the removal of the wheel barrow legs, but we got it all in eventually.

At the very next house we stopped at we saw the holy grail of furniture. The reason this item was such so amazing was because we had been searching for a very particular piece for a very particular spot and didn't want to spend a lot of money on it. It was a tall order.

We have a very small pantry and there is this small spot in the kitchen on the wall between a window, a doorway, and the island that a little hutch/cabinet could fit. It was only 29 inches wide and had to fit below the light switch. Options were few and far between, and expensive. The best thing we had found up to that day was a little cabinet (maybe 2 feet tall and 1 foot wide) that had a small trash can pull out and one drawer…for $160! And it was unfinished wood; we would have to stain it ourselves. Not that we minded the staining, but to us that was a lot of money for something so small and unfinished. I am SO GLAD we held out!

Enter the most amazing cabinet ever…

And the problem of our car being completely full…remember that easel, wheel barrow, and ladder? Yup. We literally did not have enough room in the car. We liked it though and it matched the feel of the house really well and the price was right. $55 for a completely finished piece of furniture. We talked it over with the sellers and they generously offered to hold it for us while we went home and dropped all our other stuff off. They even knocked off $10 for the gas! So for $45 we got this wonderful cabinet that was the perfect solution to our pantry problem!

We knew it was wider than the space on the wall, but we felt that if it overlapped the window it would be worth it. As if it couldn't get better, it was shorter than the window. J

We also picked up the two planting pots pictured above on the small outdoor table for $0.50 each.

Now we had a virtually empty car and a good number of garage sales left to stop at that we spotted during out trip home. You would have thought by this time we would be worn out or that the good deals would be gone, but we were on a pretty big high from all our success and scored a few more deals.

We got a croquet set and fertilizer spreader for $20.

Christmas lights, $10 for 4 packs. We have one strand of white that we used for our tree last year (my first real tree!) but that won’t really cover the tree and house this year haha.

Our last little find were these picture frames for $5 each. They still had their Pier One price stickers on them…$25 each!

The spread sheet I made has the listing price and the price we paid after some bartering. Then I put the retail value which I determined by looking online for the cheapest comparable item. This method gave me a conservative estimate for the price. Some items like the cabinet were difficult to find a good price for so I estimated. I doubled the asking price for the cabinet ($110) which I know is definitely lower than it would sell for in a store.

All in we spent $155 for a list of items worth over $691. I know these items are used but they will work perfectly for us and you can’t beat the savings! I will gladly pay less than ¼ of the cost any day!

Yard Demolition

Per the original agenda for house work, the yard was going to be left to rot away until some major things in the house were accomplished. I suggested this mainly because once you put some work into your yard, it then requires regular attention to maintain it. I thought since the yard was already deteriorating we would be better to redo some things inside the house that, once completed, we didn't have to spend any more time on upkeep. Those projects would simply be done.

That looks great on paper and sounds pretty logical but when your yard looks like this…

…priorities quickly shift. I’m also pretty sure our neighbors are tired of looking at the weed factory we have for a front lawn.

Thus, The Engineer and I picked a beautiful day and started some yard demolition. This meant getting rid of a bunch of stuff that was gifted to us by the previous owners. We started by ripping up pavers, bricks, cinder blocks, and rocks that were literally all over the yard.  I kid you not. I have NO IDEA how this many different pavers ended up on this piece of property and for what purpose. This is the stack after we ripped up maybe half of what is randomly placed, buried, or abandoned in the yard.

Crazy right!!! The good news is that we plan to use most of it in one form or another. We want to use the cinder blocks to build raised planters for our garden (more on that area below) and we will make several paths in different areas with the pavers. We have several different kinds too haha! We have red paver squares (still in the ground), white paver squares and rectangles (some pulled up and many still in the ground), red brick, (half pulled up and half in the ground), and slate (still in the ground). The slate is AMAZING. It is currently mixed in as stepping stones in a shell path. We plan to rip it all up and pack it tightly to make a fire pit area and plant green grass in the cracks, like this. The crushed shell will be moved to the side by the carport where our trash cans reside and we will put a mulch path to the shop and shed

Anyhoo, we started our backyard cleanup behind the shop. There were several lengths of drainage gutter, a ladder (thank you for leaving that!), two sections of rolled up chain link fence, a tire, and a box full of, you guessed it, more pavers! Actually this box was faux rock used for siding. When the sunroom was added the bottom was faced with these and looks very nice. I did notice that it didn't go as high as I wanted, so I’m excited to have this extra material that I can someday finish the facing with. It isn't high on the list of things to do, but it is on there! That entire area was cleaned, purged, and raked of leaves. We are only left with the ladder and gutters, much cleaner!

Cleaning the future garden area was next on the list. This area was pretty much self-volunteered as the garden because it already has a lemon tree (another awesome thing that came with the house!). It is kind of off to the side and gets a decent bit of sun. The only problem was that it was a mess. We ripped out some overgrown bushes, removed the trash that had migrated over there from behind the shop, raked the leaves, pulled out an old fence post from a chain link fence, cleaned off all the pavers, and trimmed the lemon tree! Here is the before and after:

It’s hard to call it better because now it just looks dismal and empty so we decided to use the word closer. Closer to our goal J. The mess of pipes in there is an old well with a broken pump. We plan to fix that up and use it for our irrigation system since we are pretty sure the well will be fine with a working pump. The pavers in this area of the yard make the most sense of anywhere, but unfortunately they are very dirty and quite un-level. The plan is to make a simple path form the gate to where I was standing when I took the picture from the red pavers on the other side of the yard since they are the best looking ones. Once it was all cleaned up I realized we should have trimmed the lemon tree a month ago before all the blossoms came in. Oops. We still trimmed it a little, mostly taking dead and bottom branches off to promote upward growth. Next year it will get a big trim! It’s not perfect, but it is closer.

At some point in this process we realized that the gutter on the shop was overflowing with leaves. The Engineer climbed up there to shovel it out and brought yet another cool item the previous owners left us, the pole saw. He wasn't going to do any real work, but you know how it is when you have a new toy to play with. You also know how it is when you start to trim tree limbs…there’s always that other limb that if you just took it down too things would look so much better! He wanted to just try it out and ended up cutting four decent size branches. It is not a finished job by any stretch of the imagination. We had actually planned to take the limb he was working on all the way back to the trunk. Because it is over the shop we knew it would need to be taken down in pieces, so it wasn't a waste of time at all. We are pretty sure we will rent a man lift to do all our tree trimming because we have A LOT of old tall trees, and a lot of trimming on each one! It does look nice with the area above the shop opened up though!

The last thing we did was rip out our ‘sand box’ that was in front of the shop. I say ‘sand box’ because it isn't any place I would let a kid play. The sand was actually dirt and you see that dead tree trunk back there? We found carpenter ants in it. Not to mention that we don’t have kids and someday when we do, we will build them a much nicer sand box elsewhere. It was easy to remove, just four boards nailed together.

 So now we have a pile of dirt and firewood. We left the dirt there because we will use it as fill in areas that need it when we redo pavers. It isn't super attractive, but its closer. Oh, and well take the useless, carpenter ant infested tree trunk out too J

Anyone else working on the yard? The weather has been perfect lately for outdoor jobs!

The Best Upgrades are Free!

The house has taken over life! (In a good way.) I thought I’d make a laundry list of some of the little things we have been tackling around the house!

My parents were here a few weekends ago and helped us with some housework. The Engineer and my dad hung 8 sets of blinds (I think). They made such a big difference! There were a lot of windows with little fabric panels on them or a see through covering which is not cool at night when you are in display. The new blinds look wonderful and still let all the light in when we want it.

My mom helped me clean, prime, and paint this wall.

Can you tell I forgot to take a before picture?!

We didn't really like the look of the wood finish, but I knew if we just painted it white it would look like brand new bead board. And it does! This was a free upgrade too because the previous owners left us a bunch of paint in the shed. Some of it was completely dried up, but it is great to have some of the matching paint for the house for free! I actually really like this wall now! We have the same stuff on the entire back wall of the sun room and I CANNOT WAIT to get my brush on it!

I also recently got that blue wood box to use as a shoe basket. It isn't the typical shoe basket, which I love, and it’s not huge or deep encouraging the pile up of shoes.

After I painted the little wood accent wall I found the interface between that and the adjacent trim to be dismal at best, so I carried the white paint on the trim a little farther :)

Sooooo much better!

Another free upgrade was the removal of some odd items in the backyard.

On trash day I included the old ‘protected by Brinks’ sign (which why it was on the inside of the fence I’m not too sure haha), that wonderful massive saw blade, a padlock which was locked with no key in sight, a metal Mexico dish, and a one-eyed metal frog (not pictured). Some of these things are kinda cool on their own, but all together I didn't like the look it all gave off. I also took down a hand painted sign from the shop (and by hand painted I mean finger painted) that said something along the lines of defending your right to protect yourself. Not fancy. The trash can loved it though!

Now all we have is our knight in shining…errr…rusted armor. I like him though. I think he needs a name.

There has also been a lot of cleaning going on. There was A LOT of dog hair left in the house for us, so I've been looking for every nook and cranny trying to get rid of all of it! Cleaning things makes me smile after the fact even if I am a grump through the process. I don’t like dust and old dog hair.

I’ll save some of the little additions to the house for another time. My current project is working on an upgrade to our closet doors. I’m pretty excited for this one because I am not the biggest fan of old sliding closet doors.

Working a Lil' More Than Working Out

What is exciting in your life lately? Um, big news in mine, we moved!!! Moving wasn't terrible, but it did cramp the work out schedule.

We closed on our house on Thursday and went over that evening to do a little cleaning. It was so surreal that that was our house. We will have a lot of extra spaces to fill, in a fun way. I'm so excited to work on all the new rooms! I took this panoramic before we moved all our belongings in. There's just cleaning supplies in the kitchen.

Love <3

The Engineer took the whole day off work on Friday and cleaned the rest of the house. Amazing right?

Then it rained. :-/ Luckily it only rained while we were picking up the truck and for the first hour or so of loading.

I took a half day on Friday and we loaded the truck that afternoon/evening. Sadly, it took a decent bit of time simply because of the trek to the truck. The stairs are closer than the elevator, but we didn't use them much since we were double teaming with dollys. That night we drove to the house with a few friends and unloaded our mattresses to sleep on. We woke up in the morning and unloaded the entire truck in 1.5 hours flat. Dream team. We were thankful we previously cleaned the floors (if not solely for getting rid of the dog hair the previous owners were so kind to leave us) but it helped cut down on the mess since the ground was still wet and we tracked in a bit of dirt and leaves and other things that cling to the bottom of wet shoes.

Once we started unpacking we set the guest room up in a snap (furniture, not decorations or anything).

We then moved to the living room and kitchen areas and ended up with a big mess. 

We were really happy that nothing broke during the move and everything traveled well (The Engineer noticed a ding on the corner on the dining room table and I actually forgot to go check it out). I had a little oops while setting up the kitchen though. I was moving a shelf down in the kitchen cabinets and didn't realize that there was still a glass on it. When I pulled the shelf out the glass fell into another glass on the shelf below it. It shockingly didn't break but they were stuck. I mean stuck stuck. We tried dish soap and even ran it through the dishwasher just for the heck of it. When we finally put ice in the top glass and ran hot water on the bottom one, the bottom glass cracked. We had already realized that we would probably be sacrificing the bottom one. I really couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation.

We did get the kitchen put together though. I wasn't sure how I would like having cabinets with windows, but I LOVE them!!!

Love, love, love!!

Needless to say, with all the packing, loading, unloading, and unpacking, we didn't work out at all. I finally put 5 miles on the books yesterday. Gasparilla isn't getting any farther away so I figured it would be in my best interest to get back on track! I'll leave you with our new friend in our back yard. Maybe the previous owners left him for us because they knew we were UCF Knights?

GO KNIGHTS!!!!

A Little Hey Howdy

Just popped in to say a quick hello! I had intended to have the post about our dresser/side table/cabinet refurbishment up (can you tell that I have NO IDEA what to call the thing?!) but that has clearly not happened. Sad face. My computer is on its death bed and I've thus been ignoring it and finishing that post, but we did finish the dresser...thingy!!

It has also been a bit busy around here. We went to the Gasparilla parade on Saturday which was a lot of fun and we came home with plenty of beads!

Working out fell a little to the wayside, and I know it will be difficult this week with moving but I'm going to get back on track. I have been doing plenty of active work with moving and construction at work. 

Sunday we…packed!! The vast majority of the house. I’m actually a bit worried about the structural integrity of our second floor apartment’s dining room floor. We have probably 90% of the apartment packed and 80% of that stuff is in the dining room. That’s a lot of stuff. It has held on so far but we need to move it out of there ASAP!

The good news is that we close in two days!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s to crossing our fingers that everything goes off without a hitch!

Workouts This Week

With a 15 K on the horizon, I am trying to maximize my run workouts when I get them. Last Sunday The Engineer and I ran 6 miles! We both had an awesome run…I ran slower than all my runs as of late, but given that I completed the 6 miles and felt great (relatively speaking at least, running never actually feels great) I was extremely happy!

We decided to drive out to the new Suncoast Parkway trail. It's been open for a while now but it still feels new to me, which is great because it stinks when your running routes get old. It was a beautiful sunny January afternoon with temps just below 70F. It reminded me of last year when I was running in 20F in NJ where it was grey and FREEZING. This was much better and I took some time to appreciate how lucky I am with all the changes in my life over the past year.

Monday I wanted to take my bike out but it looked like it was going to rain so I settled on the trainer. Buuuttt then my bike didn't fit in the trainer. Literally 2 millimeters off. g.r.u.m.p. I didn't want to force my bike in to the trainer and scratch it up or actually mess something up. I wasn't going to be defeated though. Instead I ventured over to our little apartment gym and rode the recumbent bike for an hour. I will forever complain about apartment and hotel gyms choosing recumbent bicycles over a regular old spin bike, but I’m still thankful they had something I could peddle on!

Monday I took myself to Davis Island to run 3.5 miles which I intended on running a little faster but alas my little leggies were tired! I still held a decent pace and skipped my strength for the evening. This week is a step back week and I want to make sure I don’t overdo it because next week has some serious (serious) miles for me! I felt a little guilty about going to DI without The Engineer because it is one of his favorite plane watching spots, but it was a fun change up for me.

Last night was supposed to be 30 minutes of cross training which I had planned for my arms. However, I ended up putting the canvas for this tent on all by myself (my co-worker got called to the field) and I was tired! That thing is heavier than it looks and it was all over my head. I felt that that was plenty of a workout for my back and arms. And I feel like I got my Super Woman on for the day. :)

The Engineer and I have been working on revamping an old cabinet we've had and we’re almost done! I’ll share that transformation soon!

Happy 2014

I like New Year’s Resolutions. They give you the chance to get focused of refocused on something. The great thing about that something is that it can be anything.

This year I want to get back to racing. I jumped age groups last year and didn’t do a single race in my new group! Life got busy and there were a lot of changes, so I am ok with that, but I miss racing. I love having a goal to work toward and I think they are fun!

First up: Gasparilla!

I’ve been working on my running game to help my triathlons a little bit. A race focused on running is exactly what I need. I’m aiming for the 15K. No time goals here, just finishing is all I need.

I’m also trying to do better about putting things away where they belong as I finish with them to stop the buildup of junk that needs to be put away each night. It’s the little things right?

Hope the New Year is off to a good start for you!