My first huge furniture purchase, ever. Bonus points for age!

On May 31, 2010, I went antiquing.  Yes, well over two years ago.  I went to one of my favorite haunts, the Antiques Marketplace in Putnam, CT.  It's four stories tall and I always manage to find something, even though I don't usually spend more than $100 when I go.  And by the drawing above, you can tell this dresser I'd spotted was WELL out of my price range (because I drew a picture of it instead of buying it...), especially because I had just spent $1000 building a lofted bed, and lived in a room that was 99 square feet (another post, another time, promise!).

However, there was something about this Victorian hotel dresser (circa 1880) I fell in love with from the start.  I like boxes and compartments, and this boasted 14 compartments of all shapes and sizes, each small set with its own different hardware and carving, so many little details, so much craftsmanship...and it was only $1600. 

Lions!

This is the coolest escutcheon I've EVER seen. I can't believe I spelled that correctly on the first try.

It even still had one of its original keys. 

About a year later, the gorgeous dresser was STILL at the marketplace, but with an adjusted price tag: $1800.  They had moved it to another room and started piling knickknacks and books on it, so I had mistakenly thought it sold until I found it.  I guess they had given up on the hopes that anyone would buy it in this economy.

At 7 feet tall and 4 1/2 feet wide, it's a behemoth of bedroom furniture.  WANT. 

Getting divorced freed me from the plain, character-less, no-history, 50's laminate crap bedroom set I so hated, but my ex had actually insisted I not buy the thing so my first act of rebellion (after serving him divorce papers, throwing all his stuff down the stairs, and changing the locks on the apartment) was to BUY THE THING.

So I went back to the Antiques Marketplace, fully expecting to throw down the entire $1800 for the dresser I so coveted if it was still there after all these years.

I got to the marketplace, and it was jam-packed with shoppers, in the middle of its President's Day Weekend sales.  I'd forgotten they were having a sale and was honestly surprised to see so many people.  I found the dresser in a back room behind old books and facing in a different direction from the last time I'd seen it, so it took me a little while.  

When I found it, I was in for a huge surprise.  That $1800 price tag had been replaced with a huge red card marked "SALE: $695".  

Um, what?  $695, and not $1695?  I ran to the front counter and paid for it, right then, right there.  I didn't even know how I would get it home.  I really didn't care. 

But...I have a boyfriend (named Brent) with a big diesel pickup truck and a dad (named Dad).  A week later, they met for the first time, I bought them both breakfast and we went to pick up this fabulous dresser in the freezing cold. And I was curious to see how Brent would react to it, because I had no problems becoming a cat lady if he didn't.

Anyway, somehow Brent and Dad managed to get this up the stairs in no time flat, without fatalities.  

And here it was on the day it came home.

I didn't just buy this piece to look at, so I filled it with clothes.  Though it's beautiful, I need to put things on it as well like lamps and jewelry and vases and knickknacks. 

Other purchases from the Antiques Marketplace include the ruffled dish left of center (used for bracelets and brooches), and the depression glass ashtray with German advertising (I took German in high school/college and it was $5!).

I have never once regretted buying this piece. (January 2018 update: I have now owned this dresser almost six years.  It has survived two moves, and still reigns supreme over all my bedroom furniture.)

What a mess...

Organizing my bookcase with nothing but a coffee cup by my side at 7AM...

Five months ago, my last blog post mentioned I was getting a divorce and that I was keeping my condo with the pink carpets.  Well, that's all true.  Just when you think you've gotten into the groove of decorating, your spouse moves out and takes half your DVDs with him but leaves all the particle board furniture that I ABSOLUTELY HATE.  If there's one thing I abhor more than pink carpets and the divorce process, it's got to be sawdust-and-glue-with-laminate furniture that's disgusting and costs too much for the garbage it is.

So X moved out (and I edited his nickname in previous entries. January 2018 note: I edited him almost completely out because he's really not important).  Things got ugly so he left so much stuff here that we almost had to rent a moving van just to bring him the things he wanted, nevermind the things he didn't.  The things he didn't want mainly consisted of furniture that I didn't like anyway, so I hemmed and hawed for a couple months about putting it up on craigslist.

This is no Victorian dresser.  This has no history, no personality, nothing.  It did have a matching 9-drawer dresser with a mirror that I don't have any pictures of and don't really care.

In the end of March, I woke up at 6AM and decided all the furniture I hated was leaving my house.  Right then, right that second.  Couldn't be bothered with Craigslist, it had to go.  It wasn't just X's former office that was chock full of dressers and a kitchen table and some other stuff, it was also my entire ugly 1950's bedroom set that I always hated that he had purchased shortly after we got married when all we needed was a bed...and the wicker headboard that was just a white blob of sticks against the wall.

So on that fateful day in March, I heaved the entire 9-drawer dresser over the bed solo at 6:30AM and prepared to empty my home of every piece of furniture I didn't like.  Every. Piece.  I called my grandfather and he brought his truck, and by 10:30 we'd donated two truck loads of ugly furniture to Goodwill.  Sometimes you just need to purge and it feels so good.

Strangely, most of my purging ended around the beginning of April.  Or so I thought...and then I quit my postal job in the middle of June.  Faced with a plethora of free time...I started purging, again.

However, for all the purging that's been done, I've been making room to bring home things that were in storage that X never liked and thus, never put up.  Like these posters that had been sitting in storage since 2007:

I suppose that's a sufficient teaser, right? Here's a small bullet list of upcoming posts...

• Furniture Find of 2006: Once upon a time there was this circular orange chair that didn't match anything ever, and then it was given to me and I threw it in my car and then made my grandparents live with it for 5 years...
• Before and After: How my grandfather turned a free Craigslist find into a bench for my grandmother, which is adorable.
• Furniture Find of 2012: If you get divorced, you should splurge on a huge piece of furniture that you've had your eyes on for two years.
• Simple DIY projects (random ideas I totally stole and executed from Pinterest...WHAT. That's what it's for.)

Now, all that icky divorce stuff aside, life goes on, and life is good.  I didn't really want to write about it but I can't just skip to the next chapter without acknowledging that it happened and why, all of the sudden, my blog just omits a person who was in my life for years. Truth is, I didn't want to abandon this blog because I put a lot of work into starting it, and seeing as it was relatively new when dung hit the fan, I figured could just give it time and pick it up again when the timing was right.  It wasn't about him anyway, it was about home decor, and we never really saw eye-to-eye with that anyway, kitchen organization aside.  He took all the kitchen gadgets with him, which leaves me with like... a crockpot...and a blender and my mom's juicer from 1992.  Oh, and the coffee maker.  At least he knew better than to take that.

Anyway, there is a new character around, but I'll introduce him in the next blog post, and we have flea market adventures and it's going to be fun to include him in future posts, mainly because we have similar tastes. He's also part of the reason I've started purging more things I don't need, and why I now have an exercise room with a brand-new elliptical machine.  This blog will get there, but things are good.