My experience buying a storage unit at auction

For any of you who watch Storage Wars, I am sure you thought about buying a storage unit at auction. I know I have. I've seen almost every episode. YUUUPPPP I have. I am a fan of treasures, and I like watching them dig through the stuff.

My family has been planning a yard sale for the end of October and I thought now is as good of time as any to try it out. The yard sale will give me an outlet to offload the small stuff in the unit as well as some of the big ones.

Since I live in Arizona and it is hot even in October, I didn't want to go standing around trying to bid on lockers. I did some searching around for online auctions. I found storagetreasures.com, storagebattles.com and lockerfox.com. After looking through all the lockers for auctions, I found the one I wanted.

It had a few days left on it so I put a bid in for half my max to test out the other bidders. Finally during the last 20 seconds of the auction, I put in my max and won the locker for $10 less than max bid. YAY!!

So now that I won, what happens next? I had to go to the storage facility and pay the winning bid in cash, plus a $100 refundable cleaning deposit. The facility manager took me to my locker and opened it up. There it was a 10x10 unit of treasure!

It took 3 truck loads and a trailer full to empty it all out. You have 48 hours to empty the unit after a win. Some facilities are gracious and give you extra time. The facility I bought from said I could have a couple extra days but I didn't want to inconvenience them.

So the fun part and the worst part is sorting. It took me 5 days to sort, clean and price everything for the yard sale. It was exhausting.

I didn't find anything in my unit that was going to make me rich or any particular item that would recoup the cost of the unit. I did find an espresso machine that was $300 when it was new. That is going to take a particular buyer to sell to. I found a $500 piece of personal use medical equipment but again, particular buyer but more than likely will end up donating to a place that helps those who can't afford this type of machine. I also found a 1987 dining table and chairs. In amazing shape really but the market for that is slim to none. There was also a rear projection TV that I made $50 on within a day.

Thankfully we are having the yard sale because those little things add up to big money. My brother came by a couple times and bought stuff. Between my brother and the sale of the TV I have made half my money back.

Yard Sale time has rolled around and it took days of prep to get ready. I had 20 tables worth of items, including my personal stuff. Exhausting work but it is the experience that has made this worth it. When I was tagging all these items I wrote them down. This adds a lot of time to the process but I like to have an idea of how much I have at sticker price. Once I have that total I cut it in half and that is my goal for the sale. So with my goal set it was time to sell.

Day 1 of the yard sale was a Friday. Friday's usually bring a lot of dealers but I didn't see many this time. It did get crazy busy. There was three of us working the sale and that almost wasn't enough. There was a point where we had a line of people waiting to pay. I sold about half of my stuff from 7:00am-2:00pm. Once the day was over I totaled up my earning which I tracked separate from my other items and made 2.5 times my original investment in the locker. Which is pretty awesome when you think about it. I didn't meet my goal on day 1 but there is always day 2.

Day 2 was slower but still productive. We had a good turn out. The best part is the neighbors come by to chat. Yard sales are a great way to get to know your neighbors. I was ready to shut down by 1:00pm the heat was getting to me but people continued to show up  until 2:30. I didn't make as much on day 2 but sold about half of what was left. I still have enough stuff left to open up for our community sale in 2 weeks. Once the day was done, I totaled up my money and made 3.7 times my original investment.

Now that it is done, would I do it again? Yes. In fact I am already looking for another unit. 

Oh Gnomeo, Gnomeo!

Gnomes! Who doesn't love gnomes? My cousin loves gnomes so much they are literally her home decor. For those of us who put our gnomes in a yard, weather will eventually take it's toll. The sun will fade the paint and then you have a sad gnome.

Fear not my friends for sun faded gnomes are just another reason to be crafty! Replacing gnomes can be expensive but you know what isn't? Paint! Especially if you get lucky like I did and buy close to 100 bottles of acrylic craft paint at a garage sale for just a few bucks. Nothing beats cheap craft supplies.

So all you need to do is give the gnome a good bath with soap and water. Once it is dry you simply paint it. You can match the previous colors or you can go a totally different direction. The sun has given you a blank canvas! Tip: Have paint brushes of various sizes handy. You can buy a bag of mixed sized brushes from your craft store for a couple of bucks. I always buy 2 bags at a time.

The most important step is the clear coat. Find one with UV protection so your hard work lasts longer!

Here are a few pictures of my gnome family.

Cable Reel into Coffee Table

I recently acquired a large cable spool. I love making things from these spools because there are so many options. If you search pinterest you will find hundreds of other craft people who made some amazing things from them.

So I took one end of the spool and made a coffee table out of it.

There was a clear coat on the spool which I had to strip and then sand off. That really was the hardest part of the process. Then I used my orbital sander on the top - 80-120-220 - the usual process. I used the mouse sander for the sides. I also used my dremel to sand any little notches in the wood and inside the holes to make sure little fingers are safe.

After that I just had fun with paint. I used acrylic craft paint that I picked up from a garage sale. Just a side note, if you see craft paint at a yard sale - buy them. You can get an amazing deal. I ended up getting 75 little bottles of acrylic paint inside a nice tote for $8. The tote alone would cost $8+ new so winner winner chicken dinner.

Anyways, back to the paint. I diluted the painted with some water so it spread a little easier. Once it was fully dry I slapped two coats of polycrylic on top.

For the legs I used black conduit pipe and attached with flanges. I gave them a coat of copper spray paint. Since the conduit was black it made a nice dark copper.

Now I have a beautiful, unique coffee table for less than $30. Actually, free because I sold the other side of the spool $30.

Porch Bench Makeover

I have always wanted an outdoor bench for my porch. I've been looking for awhile and new benches are expensive and not what I want. I wanted mine to be unique.

Then it happened, the antique mall was having a HUGE sale. 90% of the vendors were on site to wheel and deal. I had my sights set on a bench and I wasn't leaving without it. It was old but not antique and it needed to be refinished. After some back and forth with the friendliest vendor I've met, she was mine.

Most of her finish was worn off, the iron was dirty but thankfully not rusty. She was a good 5 years past due for a refinish.

I carefully disassembled her piece by piece, numbering the slats as they came off. I washed the iron with mild soap and a wire brush. I sanded the wood in my usual way, 80, 120, 220.

The wood was painted with Valspar spray paint in Nautical. I did a light coat, enough to give color but not too much from blocking the next step. Stain over paint. I love this technique. I simply used an ebony stain, wiped it on then wiped it off. It gives the wood an aged look.

For the iron I used Krylon Industrial Tough Coat in Osha White. I had to buy this at the auto paint store. I recommend a strong paint for metals for longer lasting finish. Especially since this is outdoors.

Once the paint was completely dry I used an industrial clear coat on the iron and a weather proofing clear coat on the wood.

Finally with help from my husband she was reassembled.

She turned out beautiful. What a transformation!

Coming Soon....

I have been on a bit of a hiatus from working on projects. Have no fear I have several in the works now. Currently I have a pair of end tables, a single end table, a porch bench and a DIY coffee table on my plate. If all goes well my bench should be done by tomorrow night. Stay tuned....

The Little Rocking Chair That Could

So this is a very delayed post. Last Christmas I was looking for something special to give to my baby cousin. I babysit him two days a week and every day he is here he sits in a little rocking chair. This rocking chair was actually mine when I was a child and he loved it so much.

To buy them new and unfinished was a bit expensive and I wanted something that I could really put my efforts into. Ask and you shall receive. I found two little rocking chairs on Craigslist! They had been painted and repainted and chipped off and just sad looking. I ended up taking them home for $15 total.

I only took pictures of one chair but they were both in the same condition.

Such a sad little rocking chair. Don't worry little fella I will fix you up.

These chairs required a lot of sanding trying to get off all tat old paint. Unfortunately the red paint seemed to be embedded in the wood. I did my best but it wasn't going away. Primer Time!

Once I had it covered in primer. I spray painted it. I started with the bottom first and worked my way to top. This required a lot of paint and wait due to the many angles that needed paint. Once all the paint was dry I put a protective coating on it.

Good as new! I gave one chair to my baby cousin and the other to my baby nephew. Every month my sister in law posts a picture of her son in this chair with a little button saying how old he is and it warms my heart.

Bench Love

I love benches. I haven't had many opportunities to create or refinish one until I came across this adorable country style bench.

I know a lot of people will say the hearts are outdated but I think they are darling.

I followed my usual prep work on this bench, sand, sand and more sanding. Then I simply stained the bench with rust-oleum weathered gray.

Viola! I even made the pillow from scrap material.

A Barrel of Fun

Last year I acquired a barrel that was used as a grocery store display. It has been sitting in my garage waiting its turn to be refreshed.

Yesterday was the first time in months that the weather was decent. My house was clean and my laundry was done. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. This was going to be barrel day.

After dropping my babies off at school, I shot on over to Lowe's picked up some spray paint and headed home to get cracking on it.

The reason I chose to go with spray paint is the wood on this barrel was really rough. There was no way it was going to be smoothed out. So to avoid drips and weird spots I figured spray paint would be best.

I started off by painting the barrel hoops white. After letting that dry, I taped them off to protect from the paint used on the body of the barrel.

The body is done in Valspar Nautical. I also mixed in just hints of Valspar Everglade Glen. It took about 3 coats to get the desired color but only one can of spray paint. When the paint dried I used an ebony wood stain and just dabbed it on. I didn't want to completely coat it. I wanted an antique/rustic/unique finish. The final step was to clear coat it. The barrel will sit outside so protection is key.

It turned out just beautifully.

**Disclaimer**Never take displays from behind a grocery store. Talk with the store manager to see if they are throwing any away. I have a relative who works for the store that gave the barrel to me and the manager loves seeing what I can do with old display items.

Wooden Spool Turned TV Stand!

I am a pinterest junkie! While browsing the DIY section I kept seeing pins using wooden cable spools. I thought some of them were pure genius, so I asked my dear husband to keep an eye out for one at work. He was lucky enough to find one for me and shortly after my sister in law's husband found some too. So here I am sitting on two wooden cable spools!

Well the remodel was getting loud and I was tired of being cooped up in one room so I decided to work on a spool. My original plan was to remove one of the slats in the center and make a TV stand. My thought process was, TV on top, run the cord down the center and out the opening where I removed the slat, keeping the cords from showing.

I started off by removing any hazards (staples, loose nails etc.). Then spent several hours sanding it down.

An important thing to remember is proper sanding is key! Especially if you plan on using the spool as furniture you want the surface to be smooth and safe.

I started off with an 80 grit sand paper, followed by a 120 and completed with a 220. The spools are raw wood and have holes on the surface so I used my dremel 3000 to sand down the inside of these holes. I used an orbital sander on the tops of the spool and my mouse sander for the sides of the top. For the slats I used sanding sponges. It is very time consuming but the finished product will look amazing!!

I was half way through staining the spool when the husband had a brilliant idea! Why not add a shelf? Not a shelf around the center slats but INSIDE the slats?? Sometimes he is too good to be true.

This is where a simple yet time consuming project becomes more complicated and more time consuming!!

After some brainstorming we went to the hardware store and picked up a 2'x2' piece of wood. We measured the inside space of the spool slats which for our spool was 15". So from the center of the wood we measured out 7.5" and made 4 marks then used a make shift protractor and drew a circle.

This is where a jigsaw would come in handy which of course we do not own. So our comes the dremel 3000 again! I attached the cutting bit and guide and cut out my circle just outside of the line. I used my mouse sander to smooth the surfaces down to the line.

The spool has metal rods inside the slats for support and we had to cut in grooves to the shelf to fit around the rods. I used the cutting bit on my dremel to create the groove and the sanding bit to smooth them out.

After some finessing the shelf was installed. We found little plastic shelf supports at the hardware store to hold the shelf in place.

This is one of my favorite projects. So much work went into it and this bad boy will be in my house forever!

Sorry for the poor quality photo. I recently was given a fancier camera to use, hopefully future photos will be better.

Hey I almost forgot I had a blog

So it has been awhile since I have written about well anything. The remodel took its toll on me. Before I knew it summer was here which meant vacations! Then BAM! It is back to school.

The kids are finally back into their school routines and temperatures are finally below 100 degrees (98 degrees woo hoo!) So I am back at the DIY stuff again. I have a lot of projects lined up and I am excited to get started.

Day 5 and Day 6 remodel progress

I am just going to start off by saying that I am ready for this to be over.

Day 5 was supposed to be plumbing day; however, the plumbers thought they found a crack but didn't have their jack hammer to break out some concrete to look further. So that ended day 5.

Today is Day 6. Plumbers are here and there is no crack! Drywall is being hung and progress is being made. I will update tomorrow on everything that was accomplished.

On a negative note, we had our furniture in a storage pod out front. With the rain we had, we decided to inspect the furniture. One corner of the pod leaked....right onto my 1916 Edison disc phonograph! We have a professional coming to look at it today to assess the damage. UGH!

Remodel Day 3 and 4

Hey everyone! We are on day 4 of our remodel. Nothing too exciting going on right now. These two days are just electrical work.  Day 5 is going to be a big day, more demolition and some framing and drywall going up. We have a soffit in our kitchen that we just learned was pointless so it is coming down! Very excited about having our kitchen ceiling a foot taller! It will match the rest of the house!

On a positive note, I found before pictures of our house! Once it all comes together I will post it.

Remodel day 2

Day 2 was so very loud. It started off with what they thought was just the demo of a  basic wall. This was for the extension of our pantry by combining our laundry room with the pantry. They break through the drywall and find that there is a full on slump block wall behind 4" of framing. The poor guy sat there with a sledge hammer for what seemed like forever! We didn't know there was block wall back there because it was framed up on both sides. So loud. They also closed up an exterior door that was off our laundry room. I guess it is important to share that several previous owners ago the addition was used as a hair salon. The addition is now our master with private exit which is right across from the laundry exit. Great progress today. The good news is that they fixed my door bell that hasn't worked since we moved in.

 

Remodel Day One

Day One:

Oh my dust! Walls are coming down and the house stinks!! They have successfully took down the pony wall. Now they are working on the wall that separates the formal living from the family room. I know that sounds strange but our house was built in 1971 and what is supposed to be our family room/ dining area is just long and narrow there isn't really any room to arrange furniture. So the plan is to make it all one large great room. It will all be more on the formal side of things. We have 5 bedrooms and we turned the 5th bedroom into a retreat where I store all my craft supplies and have two of the best recliners ever. This is where my hot glue magic happens.

Here is a picture of the inside from our front door. I forgot to snap pictures before we took out the floor. It was a floating floor system 20 minutes start to finish to get out. There was carpet too and that came out pretty quickly. We did this a few days ago to save a buck.

 You can see the dividing wall in the above picture. That is gone now!

Already looking better don't ya think?

Here are a couple shots from the kitchen with no more pony wall.

As you can see my cat is trying to figure out what the heck is going on. We are moving the pony wall to the opposite side so we can get some more cabinets in and have it flow with the rest of the cabinets.

It has only been one day and I am ready for it to be over. So much noise and dust! The workers have been awesome and cleaned up before they left. So far way better than our bathroom remodel.

Time for a remodel

My hubs and I have owned our home for three and a half years now. When we bought it we knew some things would need to be fixed up. We already remodeled the master bathroom about 2 years ago. We hired a contractor based on a referral of a friend. What started out a two week job ended up taking two months because the contractor got a job with a big company so our job became a side job. It wasn't a good experience for many reasons.

Since our history with remodels was small and not great I am a little nervous about starting the next remodel. It is much larger scale than the bathroom. It is all the main areas in the house. Walls are coming down, floors are being replaced, counter tops, windows the works. The biggest part of the job is combining the walk in pantry and the laundry room. The laundry room is in the garage just on the other side of the pantry wall. This means no washer or dryer for 4-6 weeks!! Dust, dirt and debris? No problem!! Hauling my laundry to relatives every couple of days? No fun!!

Please everyone cross your fingers for us. Demo starts tomorrow!!

Not crafting was driving me crazy so....

Ok so not being able to craft lately has been driving me insane. I am still trying to get caught up on housework. Blah. 

Anyways, I decided last night that I couldn't take it anymore and sat down with some yarn. 

I wanted to make something easy that I can do in one sitting so I made a beanie for my boy. He has more beanies than he needs considering we live in the desert but he still gets a kick out of Mom's crochet magic. 

Following what I did with the gumba beanie. I whipped up a Jack Skellington Beanie. Not too shabby for my first try at it.

 

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile!!

Hey everyone. I apologize for not having anything new to post. We spent a week in California with the kids and now I am down with some serious hip pain. For anyone who suffers any kind of hip pain, I am so sorry. It is the worst. Walking becomes next to impossible and prescription pain medication does not help.

So between vacation and hip pain I haven't been able to craft in two weeks. I am so behind on my house work that it will probably be another week before I can get back into the swing of things.

I have some awesome projects lined up too. I have an adorable bench I picked up at a yard sale that is bare wood! All it needs is some sanding and staining!

I also have a vintage milk can, two cable spools, and a desk that needs redone.

The weather is perfect now. We are only reaching 90 degrees now so once I am fully functioning again, I should be able to crank these projects out with no risk of heat stroke!!

We are also about to enter the baking season. I can't wait to share with you recipes and pictures! If you like cheesecake then stay tuned because I make killer cheesecakes!

Finally!!

Well I finally finished moving my craft posts to this blog. So anyone looking at all the posts from yesterday just know I am not on a crafting rampage!! Well, I kind of am but not that excessive...yet.

I've been trying hard to finish some projects eating up space in my garage. Crafting time isn't always easy to come by. Raising two kids, babysitting a one year old and maintaining our home takes up a lot of time. I never want to rush a project either, I want to do the best job I can do so if that means it takes a week to do something someone can do in a day than so be it.

I hope you all enjoy the posts. Please feel free to follow me or to share my posts.

Comments, tips or questions are always welcome!

ORBS!!!

I’m about to tell you all about orbs!! Now I am not talking about the little ghost dots in pictures but a spin off of my garden gazing ball obsession. I just loved how much pizazz the gazing balls gave my flower bed so I came up with an idea to create them on a smaller and lighter scale. This way my very large tree can have pizazz too.
First thing you will need is a wiffleball or other light weight ball in a similar size. I found my wiffleballs at the dollar store 3/$1.

Now you will need something shiny to put on the ball. The glass gems I used for the gazing ball would work but it makes it a bit heavy. So I found these rhinestone like gems from Hobby Lobby. The container is 1 pound and contains various sizes.

I hot glued this little things to the wiffleball. There might be a faster way of adhering them to the ball; however, I really wanted them to stay in place. The Arizona weather can be very unforgiving.

I tied on some fishing line and hot glued gems right over the knot. Once it was finished I tied a paper clip to the other end. Secured with a little more hot glue and BAM! Hanging orb is finished.

Tinted Mason Jars

So like everyone else on pinterest I have discovered the potential of mason jars. I decided I was going to try tinting them. Since this was going to be an experiment I went to my local thrift shop and picked up 4 small jars.

I bought some glass paint at Michael’s. I bought two colors and mixed it together. The blue was a little darker than I wanted to I picked up a white with glitter to mix for added sparkle. Who doesn’t like sparkle right?

I followed the instructions on the paint. I painted two coats waiting at least an hour between coats. Then as per instructions wait 4 days for the paint to dry. Once the long wait was over, I put them into a cool oven, turned it to 275. Once it reached 275 they baked for 30 minutes, and then cooled in the oven.
They turned out pretty considering I had no idea what I was really doing. :)

I am going to find some pretty ribbon for the top of the jar then will put some candles in them.