Hey bunnies! So! Do you have a dream? I do. I dream of a giant warehouse full of dirt-cheap, vintage and antique furniture. That nobody else knows about. And guess what I found last Friday! Yes! You guessed it! Dirt-cheap-super-awesome-furniture in a little out of the way storage locker!

So. This all started last Thursday when Mr. Bug and I went to Ikea. We always cruise through the as-is room and I spied with my greedy eye one of the upholstered barstools I’d been thinking of buying. The one with the linen coat. And lemme tell you – I’ve been REALLY WANTING A BARSTOOL! This is the height of laziness, but I especially wanted one while cooking. Because, you know how you have those little gaps of time – say five minutes while something comes to a boil? Well, I always find myself wishing I could just perch at the little breakfast bar thingie rather than walking the whole ten feet to sit on the sofa.

So we’re at Ikea, and beat down by the bummers I’d been seeing on craigslist, I saw the relatively benign, but serviceable (oh, who’m I kidding? I really like ’em) Henriksdal – a floor model for $75. I’ll admit, it had the birch legs, not my favorite, but I REALLY WANTED A STOOL!

Mr. Bug talked me out of it. When faced with the choice of spending or not spending money, he will usually opt for the latter.

And then the VERY next day I found an ad for some stools that looked really good. At least, good for me. My style. In truth I saw the listing in the middle of the night, right before I fell asleep. I sent an email from my iPhone that basically said “Is it really only $75 for all THREE??!! I want them!” and fell asleep. Lucky for me I obsessively cruise craigslist in the middle of the night, because it was indeed only $75 for all three and the woman I bought them from is scrupulous about going in email order for her preference in selling – I got in line first!

But the best part was the pickup – I drove up to Denton, which is about a half hour from my house. My Garmin led me all over tarnation until I finally turned into the lot of an old storage locker place. Turns out, the stools were for sale by a family who is in the business of buying and selling antiques and such. The son is the buyer, dad fixes stuff up and mom handles the sales. They have  a couple booths at antique malls AND they had about 1200 SF of storage lockers (three in all) PACKED full of furniture (and tools! The workshop was there too!) I got to rifle through all the lockers, and even MORE fun, they were planning on having a ‘warehouse’ sale the next day, so I got to bring Mr. Bug back to meet the nice couple and snoop through all their stuff.

The prices were awesome, ya’ll! The stools need a lot of work, but even so, $25 a piece was a great deal!

Oooo… I love’em so much! Obviously, the upholstery has seen better days, but it smells fine (most important part!) and I will just put little mini slipcovers over them. Unless I get super motivated and take apart the stools to reupholster.

What I LOVED about the chairs was the perfect amount of wear!

I just love the way the frame and cane look from this side. Problem is, the BACK side is not nearly as worn!

I really don’t like how dark they are from this side! Here you can see the contrast clearly…

Harumph. I thought I could just hit the back with sandpaper to even things up, but my little test patch did NOT yield good results. It took off ALL the color, leaving it super light (OK, maybe I shouldn’t have tested with 60 grit…) It almost seems like the fronts of the chairs were exposed to sun for a really long time.

So I’d like to take off SOME of the color, but not all of it. Any suggestions? Right now, I’m thinking that I might try hitting it with a thin coat of stripper, then wipe away immediately. On that subject, a word to the wise, if you are looking for the answer to a similar problem, do not google “Stripper to take off thin layer.” Just don’t. Trust me.

Anyway… any thoughts? How do I get just SOME of that stain/varnish off? C’mon… someone out there has to know!

While you all chew on that, I got one more little present from the storage locker. Remember my super-prison-cell like corner?

Well, stashed under a mountain of chairs, I spied the cutest little blue table in the right size and the style I had in mind. It came home with me – forty bucks!

I actually really like the blue color and how beat up the paint is, but the blue doesn’t really work in this space, and as much as I like paint that’s beat up to the point of flaking off, Mr. Bug thinks furniture like that is more appropriate for, well, not our breakfast nook!

I’ve already got three coats of chalk paint on this little guy, with the top waxed.

And, yo, check it out! Mr. Bug and I managed to get drapes put up over the weekend in our prison corner! So we’ve already gone from jail cell…

To…I don’t know. Curtains-and-round-table, I suppose! I just know I like it about a million times more, and I’ve made a few other changes since I snapped this photo Sunday evening that have made the corner EVEN better!

I think this is going to end up being one of my favorite spots in the whole house!

PS! oooo…. almost forgot my other weekend antique aquisition! How could I pass up this excellent looking history of Dallas? Pink cover and a reference to lusty Texans? Perfect!