I have this little problem and it’s kind of embarassing. Sometimes when I’m driving down the road and I see someone throw out a perfectly good piece of wooden furniture, I kind of pull my car over and pick it up and bring it home with me. There. I just admitted to the whole world I’m sort of a dumpster diver. No, I would never actually dive into a dumpster, but I do salvage stuff when I see an opportunity.
Like this? My parent’s neighbor was moving and cleaning out her whole house and storage. This bookcase, which is almost 5 feet tall was tossed out along the side of the road. It was a perfect bookcase, at least in my eyes, because it had a couple of short shelves and some taller ones…perfect for paperbacks and larger books that normally won’t fit in a regular bookshelf. So I grabbed my dad’s pickup truck and brought it home. Where it sat under the carport for well over a month.
Yesterday I finally had a free day to play around with fixing it up and so Cracked Daddy sanded it and cussed and sanded and cussed because it would be so much easier to just go out and maybe BUY a new bookshelf..but what fun would that be?….but mostly sanded.
….and then it was finally ready for a coat of flat black paint, which promptly turned into several coats because Cracked Daddy bought oil based paint. Ahem.
In any case, I’m pleased with the end result. I haven’t loaded it up with books yet, but it looks great in our living room and you can’t beat free, right?
Nice find…and nice work.
Reminds me of our recent dumpster dive.
During our early married life, most of our furniture was either handed down, found, or bought at auction (I worked for an auction company for several years and this was a boon to furnish our rooms).
Dumpster diving is a favorite hobby of mine as well. Luckily, I have dumpsters just a few steps from my door.
Oh, and by the way, I have THREE bookshelves without backs and they work fabulously. Made it all the way across the Atlantic and STILL haven’t collapsed. 😉
What a fabulous find! You did a great job giving it a new life. Love the black paint.
We’ve got a man who drives through our neighborhood several times a week and takes his pick of things that folks put out for the garbage.
Love the black color of your shelves.
I do the same thing! It drives my dh crazy but if it’s good why not fix it up and make it great?!
It looks really good and I love the black. 🙂
WOW!
Looks great! I love the black color.
I have been guilty of doing that on occasion! LOL
That’s called being a savvy shopper. 🙂
Nice find.
How awesome! My friend Chicky*Bird does the same thing and has posted a bunch of her projects. She even spoke at our church mom’s group about it last week.
Enjoy your new bookcase. 🙂
Ooo, very cute!
Very cool!
Stefani @ Mommy Enterprises
you’re my kinda girl!
and our husbands would get along nicely as well! 😉
Thats awesome!!!! Congrats on a great (FREE) bookcase!
I guess it would be easier to go to Lowes or Home Depot, if you actually had one in your town:) Oh well, maybe the local hardware store will have it:)
leigh-nc
i’ve done this many times before! Nice shelf girly:)
That bookcase looks great!
What’s the expression… someone elses trash is someone elses treasure. LOL…
It turned out really nice!!!
Whoever threw this bookcase away removed its back. The back is important because it provides cross-bracing which prevents the case from twisting under pressure and collapsing.
The problem’s easy enough to fix though. Go to home depot or lowes and have them cut you two lengths of 1×6 the width of the bookcase. Then nail one at the top and one at the bottom of the back of the bookcase. Be sure and use at least three nails on each end, and it wouldn’t hurt to use some glue in addition to the nails.
This simple change will make the bookcase much, much stronger and prevent you from waking up in the middle of the night with all your books dumped on the floor because the bookcase collapsed when the cat jumped on it.
The finished product is very pretty
That is awesome! I love frugal decorating and like you said you can’t beat free 🙂 Happy WW!