New Home for Rejected Items

When I was in middle school, all of the girls had to wear gym suits for physical education classes. They were hideous. As soon as I was done with eighth grade, my mother gave mine away. I was happy to see it go, picturing another girl covering up my name and replacing it with her own. Years later, my aunt found it at a yard sale, with my name still on it. She bought it as a gag and gave it to my mom. By then, I had moved from Minnesota to Arizona. Of course, my mom shipped it to me. I had some good laughs over that one. Imagine the indignity of girls going through puberty wearing this:

My mother is the one who taught me the virtue of thriftiness. I’m setting the stage here, so bear with me. After my husband passed away in 2016, I spent a year being the live-in caretaker for my good friend, co-boat-owner, and SCUBA buddy until he, too passed away. When I moved back home, I knew I wanted to make changes to my house to reflect my new life. I was on a single teacher income, so here’s where thrift comes in.

I started by finding a good sale on paint. I ended up personally repainting my whole three-bedroom house, including a couple of ceilings. Nine gallons of paint, five gallons of Kilz, and very sore arms and neck later, my savings is unknown, but significant compared with paying someone to do the job.

I was still hard at work about a year later when I met Ted, who would become my second husband. He was a big help with the renovations and decorating. Together, we worked out some themes based on our mutual interests – music for the living room, ocean for one bathroom, trees for the main bedroom, stone for the main bath, and southwest for the guest room. We used things that we already had, but we looked for items in lots of other places too - such as thrift stores, yard sales, and websites.

Although I did keep a larger bookshelf for many of our books, Ted made this bookcase using bargain lumber and chains we found at an antique store.

For the southwest room, I found this decorative ladder/rug piece at a yard sale. It was listed at $20. A sign said, “Make an offer.” I offered $15, figuring she might counter with $18, but she just said, “No.” On principle, I refused to pay the asking price. I told Ted about it. He said, “Give me your $18. I’ll get it.” Sure enough, he put the money in his wallet and showed her that’s all he had, and she took it. We went to all the trouble to save $2!

As my daughter is an artist, she had been given some silk screen frames. With her permission, Ted and I used a bunch of them to frame artwork we made together. As a music teacher, this first piece for our living room is one of my favorites. We took old, broken instruments and gave them new life. My goal was to include pieces from each family of instruments (woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion.) Sorry percussionists, I only included a broken drumstick and a drum key for you. Cost: about $5 for the backboard. Incidentally, I tried to no avail to fix the rather new ukulele, which a student had stepped on.

Ted made this unique piece for our tree bedroom by intentionally rusting the metal leaves he cut out and using yet another (smaller) silkscreen frame.

I found this fan for our bedroom at a yard sale. They had listed it at $50 and took the $40 I offered. Luckily, it was functional. We painted the ugly brass base and added the pinecone pulls. You can just make out my string art tree on the wall - another fun thing to design and implement.

When we went hiking in Flagstaff, I found an interesting branch. I dragged it all the way back to the car. Ted thought I was nuts. However, when he mounted it above our bed, he admitted that it fits the tree theme very well, and it gave me a place to hang a nice dream catcher, complete with a tree of life. I found the bed frame on eBay. Retail $700, my price, $400.

I found this sink on eBay for $79. The granite, I found on Facebook marketplace for $75 on top of two ugly end tables. The seller discarded the bases for us. We used the round granite to make into a table for the backyard (see below.)

I collected flat rocks from the river’s edge for a couple of months. Ted and I made this bathmat and sketched out my vision for a professional to make the “river” across three walls in the shower with the rocks I had found. The tile artist said his wife wants him to do it in their bathroom next!

I was given a comfortable couch and artwork from my daughter (a splatter painting and several pieces of pottery) and my father (a pastel) and Ted's father (watercolor.)

I also got some free items from freecycle.org. It’s a great way to post things to give away, to request items, or to find things other people are giving away rather than landfilling. I got some Arizona Highway magazines, some bird books, a humidifier, and a garbage disposal, all free.

I did have new tile put in professionally through most of my house, and carpet in the office. I also had a member of my church put in crown molding and new baseboard. All told, I spent about $20,000. Ted, as a former real estate agent, estimates that I added about $100,000 to the value of my home with all the repairs and renovations. Not only that, but now it’s a “new” home for a new marriage.