Ding, ding, we have a winner.

Well, that was easy! The overwhelming majority voted for painting the nightstand gray. Your wish is my command.

And speaking of winners, I think its about time we had a giveaway round these parts. I have something in mind for true old house lovers but I'm not sure how many of you readers are in the midst of home renovations that would make this prize worth winning. Would you mind responding in the comments about what brings you to my blog: are you about to or in the middle of a renovation? are you more of a home decorator? or are you just here to read along with my rantings? here for some other reason (pls explain)?

A few people asked where I found the nighstand. Where else but my favorite haunt - Englishtown Used Furniture & Antiques. I'm pretty certain Mr. Limestone curses the day I stumbled upon this place as I now make him take me there at least once a month. As I've mentioned, its completely disorganized and filled to the brim with old crap - so you have to really dig and even then its hit or miss. But I definitely love this place.

Want to see what else I snagged?


This little ceramic bust marked at $3 but the owner brought it down to $1 because there is a crack at the back of the head.

And this etched silver plated tray for $2.50. Again, I had to search through a mountain of crap to find this one but for $2.50, can't really complain.

Should you happen to visit there one day and find a raggedity looking woman with a glazed look in her eyes scanning the piles, that's me!

Public Service Announcement: Get a Snuggie

Let me start off by saying that I'm not getting any sort of compensation from the Snuggie manufactering industry. I'm just totally in love with the Valentine's Day gift from my husband.


Yes, I laughed at the commercial too. Its a pretty ridiculous idea. A blanket with sleeves? Come on people! I'm way too cool and sophisticated to want one of those. Right?




That was until I spent the last few months insisting its freezing in this house while my husband walks around in his underwear sweating. Ok, maybe I have a tempature problem. But that doesn't help me stop my teeth from chattering.

Being the romantic that he is, a maroon snuggie was waiting for me when we returned from Japan. Now I am the proud owner of one (along with completely useless complimentary booklight) and it has rocked my world.

Sure, I look like I'm about to commit some sort of animal sacrifice in a twisted cult for reality tv watching. I don't care!

Note to my neighbors: Try to avoid looking in my (still uncovered) windows during evening prime time hours. You are bound to be terrified by what looks like the female Dumbledore flipping through channels.

Antique vs. Junktiques

Be forewarned - I have a little bit of a vent in this post. If you don't want to hear me complaining, feel free to scroll down to the bottom of the post and answer the question I'm posing.



I understand that proper antiques are expensive. They should be! They were prized pieces to begin with that have been lovingly tended to for decades and remain in pristine condition. So you'll hear no argument from me when I walk into a fine antiques boutique and do a double take on the prices.

But there is another kind of object that isn't really an antique by my definition. Those are the kind of pieces that have grown dusty in grandma's attic or gotten beaten about in the garage for the past 50 years. They aren't in great condition and require a good deal of work before they can be presentable again. They started their life as distinctly not fancy and are now just a couple of steps from junk. So lets call these "junktiques".

These junktiques are the kinds of things I go searching for. I don't care a wit about pedigree. In fact, the idea of having a expensive heirloom in my possession is positively off putting! I just want something with a little bit of character that I can put my own decorative stamp on and prolong its useful years. Ive spent the better part of a year keeping my eyes open for just these kinds of pieces. Specifically, Ive been on the look out for furniture that I could use in my bedroom but keeping an open mind on other things too. And what do I have for my efforts? Nothing!

Its not for lack of looking, its for complete outrage at the price of some of these junktiques. No matter how disgusting the store, how poorly displayed, how lackluster the piece, I am always shocked at the price. Case in point, I visited a complete mess of a store not far from my house. Furniture stacked up on top of each other all the way to the ceiling. Friendly shop keeper staked out in front with a black and white television and portable heater. No posh customer service, no pretty displays , no heat, florescent lighting, etc. The scene was set for good deals as far as I was concerned. I found a great set of nightstands that needed to be painted and restored a bit but I was willing to put in the effort. Oh shopkeeper - how much are these two? $3600!!! WHAT???? These two tables here that aren't finished are $3600??? Yep. Clearly, I had picked the one set that was fancier than the rest. So I kept looking around finally finding something in the basement that was dinged up pretty badly. Surely these would be the bargain basement finds I was looking for. The price? $1100!! WHAT????

Similar scenes have played out all year long at other junk shops and flea market spread across the tri-state area. Perhaps I'm just really cheap but I just can't bring myself to spend thousands of dollars on pieces that need at least a few hours of serious elbow grease and have no inherent value.

Maybe I am looking in the wrong place? I don't believe its just bad luck on my part - the kind of place Im looking for HAS to be out there.

Do you have a favorite juntique shop that you can recommend? Preferably within driving distance and with enough selection to make the trip worthwhile. Did you score a great deal on something you love?

Flea Market Finds

In an attempt to find some unusual Christmas gifts, I ventured out with my brother to a independent gift fair organized by one of my favorite blogs, http://www.brownstoner.com/



While interesting to browse, it was a bit of a bust in terms of finding anything. Empty handed after the gift fair, I braved the frozen temps to cross the street and go to the outdoor flea market. There were only a few vendors with their wares due to the tempatures but I did find a few gems of my own amid the other knicknacks.

Im hoping to use the salt and pepper shaker for Christmas. Anyone know if there are any health risks to using old metal pieces for this?

I'll need to get a piece of glass and cardboard backing for the frame but other than that, its perfect. Im not sure what photo to put in there but I ♥ it.

Can't wait til next spring when all the flea vendors are back in full force. Hopefully I can find some more little pieces like these.

Goodies on the Cheap

You may have noticed a trend in this blog - I LOVE TARGET. Actually, I love finding the the cheapo goodies at any huge mass market store including Walmart, Christmas Tree Shops, Michael's, Kmart, etc.. And I'm not ashamed to admit it!

So in keeping with the economic downturn news that is completely bombarding us, I present to you the "Goodies on the Cheap" blog entry. I'll bring these to you on occasion as I find them.

Today's featured item is this John Derian melamine platter


Isn't it adorable? Its on the small side which makes it even more useful. It would be great as a keys catch all in a hallway table or serving up some cookies for guests. $13, available in store only.

And for those extra observant readers - it is missing the "j" and "w" so I'd advise against using it as a children's learning tool :)

More birthday goodies...

I must admit I totally scored on my birthday this year. I got all sorts of goodies that Im excited to put to use. I'll post more about the others later but the topic of my post is this candelabra.


Here is the description from the Wisteria website: Did Someone Say Drama? You don’t need a phantom in your opera house. Just plenty of candles and room to let the flames dance. The arms vary in length and the finish on the iron invokes years of use. People will think your grandmother was a baroness – or at least a soprano. Holds twenty candles.

I thought that was a pretty good description. Its definitely cool but now that I have it in front of me, Im having second thoughts. Mostly because I can't imagine how Im going to use this without ruining whatever table its sitting on with wax. It would make a fabulous outdoor centerpiece for my Halloween stoop party - but its a little extragant for just that use.

What do you think? Should I keep it or return it? If I keep it, how do I use it without making a waxy mess of my house?

They can't all be winners :(

After seeing the photo of the luggage nightstand, I pretty much fell in love with the idea.

I thought it would be perfect in place of the guest room nightstand I had been hunting for.

Since I didn't have any extra LV luggage laying around, I would have to find some hard sided vintage sets. No problem - ebay was waiting. The only changes I wanted to make was adding a 3rd piece for height. Thanks to Flickr, I stumbled upon this execution of the idea, and thought it would make a nice piece for a guest room. I stalked ebay listings until finally winning an cream colored 3 piece Samsonite set from the 40s/50s. Yippee!

I got it home and realized that the pieces weren't quite rectangular but angled down a bit creating an issue in the stacking. I added brass casters to the front and some shims in the middle to offset the slant. That seemed to work. I drilled holes in each case and attached them to each other using a few bolts/nuts/washers. I planned to cover the bermuda stickers with some Paris ones but other than that, it looked pretty snazzy in my dining room.

All was right with the world until I put it in the guestroom. I suppose I could have bothered to do a "dry fit" before going to all that trouble but Im sorry to say I didn't.

Damn me all to hell! Its totally out of scale for the spot. Im so bummed and I have absolutely no use for this anywhere else. I suppose I could take it all apart and use the cases for storage holes and all. But what a waste of time!

Oh well, they can't all be winners I suppose. I'll just have to go out and find a traditional nightstand.

The Medicine Cabinet Uncovered.

As I may have mentioned before, the person who sold us this house had it totally cleaned out before putting it on the market. From what we hear, she did it at personal expense and aggravation to herself since she had to hire people to do this for her and the house was full of junk. So we know we should be grateful that we didn't have to do all the heavy lifting there.

But with that said, Mr. Limestone and I mourn the loss of all old junk that once took up residence here. I know it was of no value but we have a sort of reverence for old things...even ordinary things. So when we took possession of the house, we started opening cabinets and looking in ceiling tiles for old forgotten stuff. Much to our shock, we really didn't find any. Whoever did the clean out, did a good job of taking everything - even scrapes of paper or things like that you would expect to find.



But a few days ago I was in the pink scary bathroom (I try to avoid this room whenever possible) and happened to slide open the cabinet. EUREKA! Must have missed looking in here when we did the search earlier. Inside were an assortment of toiletries considerably older than me. Some things I recognize: ponds face cream, secret deodorant, etc. Some things I don't recognize like oil of wintergreen. Still pretty fun to find these things in the way they were packaged decades ago. My favorites are the oil of wintergreen that came from Ballards pharmacy and the Camphor that came from Neergards. Those in the area will recognize those two as the pharmacies our mothers went to when we were sick (before Rite Aid and CVS were on every other corner).

I don't know how old the bottles are. Anyone know when Ballards pharmacy was "South 8-1325"? And what is Oil of Wintergreen good for anyway?

Mystery of THE key
{21 feb 2007}

Every single door in our house had a mortise lock. And I do mean every one - even the hall closet doors. So whoever originally lived here must have liked to keep everything buttoned up.

I actually really like them. We suffer from doorknobfallingitis in our current bathroom due to an old door and a new doorknob. At least the doorknobs will all stay securely in place this way.

But the mystery is this. The entire house has skeleton key locks. But only one key was found in the house. I've heard that many of these houses all operate on one skeleton key (making it convenient for the key holder but not very secure in general) so I wasn't surprised to find a single key. What is mysterious is that the key doesn't open any of the locks! So where did that key come from? Its not like the prior owner had much of a penchant for keeping decor so I don't think it would have been for decorative purposes. Spoooky.

I've read that a locksmith can fashion a working key from the lock. Anyone do this with success? Any suggestions of Brooklyn locksmiths that won't look at me as the crazy lady I am when I carry a box of mortise locks into their shop?

Closed
{11 jan 07}

Its official. We* now own** this beauty***. Today was closing day. Everything seemed to go fairly smoothly.

Sign, sign, sign our lives away.

Of course its freezing today so we didn't spend too much time hanging out in there since there is no heat or working plumbing. Mr. Limestone carried me over the threshold which put him health at great risk for back injury...but a sweet start to what I hope to be a happy story.

footnotes: *the bank; ** partially; ***beast