Road Side finds

So, I don't always find everything at yard sales and thrift stores. I have become perfectly comfortable taking home articles left on the side of the road. My 2 wood, front porch rockers were pulled from a dump pile roadside, brought home, and painted with my favorite oil paint purchased from Habitat For Humanity ReStore several years ago. Those rockers are my favorite finds. Johanna and I always slow down when passing by the house I spied them, lying abandoned in the mud. The skid marks have faded from that road, but our warm fuzzy feelings haven't :)

Two weeks ago, I found a bike in my work neighborhood on a dump pile. I checked it out and brought it home thinking I would need to take to bike shop for servicing. There was a lot of dried mud on the frame; it had been lying in the rain for a while before the owners had put it out for garbage pick up and the gel seat was nasty.  My old bike is not in good repair and I never did like the gears on it but it does have a very comfortable Schwinn gel seat cover I found at a yard sale years ago.

I pumped the tires and noted with relief they stayed inflated. Good sign! Husband Steve took a look at it over the weekend, made adjustments, switched out the seat, gave it a test ride and voila! Christina has a working bike for FREE!

This week's find was a Step 2 Froggy Sandbox with sand toys and sand still in it. The wet sand made it heavy but I was able to dump most of it out before loading it. It looked pretty nice and I thought I could sell on Craigslist. I thought briefly of my great nephew Hugh, but he is at the beach almost every other day and has the biggest sandbox around....The Beach!

In my eagerness for a quick turnaround, I posted the sandbox on Craigslist for $25 after researching other listings for this item. Before I really checked out the condition thoroughly. The same day I had an offer and I was quite happy with the fast response. However, when I started to dump the remaining sand out and looked more carefully, I found stains from the sand residue and small discolorations. I hoped a good scrub with bleach water would do the trick but alas, no. Not all the stains came out. Now I am not talking nasty stains, just enough that I no longer felt comfortable with the $25 price tag. Johanna gave it a look and agreed $25 was too much. We agreed on $15 and I contacted the buyer with the reduction. 

When the buyer arrived she and her husband still wanted the sandbox and were happy I had included the sand toys I found in it. However they just had a twenty dollar bill. I had no change and neither did Steve. They gave me the $20 anyway and happily loaded the box saying how much their 2 and 4 year olds would enjoy. Let this be a lesson. When buying on Craigslist, bring the exact amount you agreed on!