Craigslist Addicts - The First Step...

I love Craigslist.

LOVE

Want to write Craigslist-themed sonnets...  Draw little hearts in my notebook margins with CL in the middle...

And some days I feel like Craigslist really loves me back.  (What do you mean, it's all in my head?)

Now, I am a girl with no room in her house to store a single extra piece of furniture.  In fact - I am trying to get rid of several pieces already in it.  I am a girl who has an ongoing projects list that numbers into the hundreds (at least - I kind of run out of enthusiasm for making a projects list when it gets several pages long). 

I might also be a girl who bought two matching child-size wingback chairs for $10 a pop with the goal of re-upholstering them, and then got them home to realize she has no idea how to do that.  I might be a girl who has promised her boyfriend on multiple occasions (including the last time when the pine dresser came home) that this was it - I would not buy anything else off of Craigslist for a while.  I might have even sworn an oath or crossed my heart.  (Both? And you're sure my fingers weren't crossed? What was I thinking?)

So I am obviously not a girl who should spend valuable time perusing the "Furniture by Owner" section of Craigslist (specifically the $1-$100 group - because I live on a budget even in my dreams).  I am obviously not a girl who repeatedly finds complete steals and tries to rationalize breaking my word (to the love of my life) for used furniture.  I am not that girl.  I am not that girl.

Try and be strong, Kai.

I'm not sure why I bother looking on Craigslist when I'm not in the market.  Most days I don't even have a way to get a piece home (one car family - and it's a small car).  And I always find something.  It's like purposefully falling in love with a gay guy (unless you are a gay guy - then it would be like falling in love with a straight guy) - hearts will be broken.

So I thought, maybe I can share them on the blog? Virtual window shopping is fun from time to time now, isn't it?  And hopefully it will help me resist the urge to give the owners of these diamonds-in-the-rough a call.  Because if there's one thing I've learned from Craigslist is that every day will bring you a new deal.

After reading this post by Maggie Rose I have been dying to get my hands on an oak pedestal base dining table and take it from blah to gorgeous.  Wouldn't this do the trick?

Only $35.  Are they serious?  These are the days when I dream of buying a truck.  Actually, I would want a table with a leaf in it so we could sit the entire fam on occasion.  But it would also look totally beautiful painted white, right?  Lovely piece.

Next we have these office chairs that have sat on Craigslist for weeks.  The poor seller has repeatedly reduced the price and still no bites?  I think they're totally Pottery Barn.

$5 a pop.  This one is really hard to resist.  I don't love my office chair now - and they actually kind of match the wood tone of our desk.  But then I would want to buy 2, because I have plans of eventually changing the random storage hall by our master bedroom into an office space with two desk places.  And $10...  Seriously, I need rehab.

These chairs:

I die!  You would think that I really love wingback chairs, but I actually don't care for them much.  My scavenger boyfriend once brought home 2 wingback chairs when we lived at our old house and I sold them super cheap at a garage sale just to get them out of my house.  I do like the  new modern ones with straighter lines.  I usually hate the Queen Anne (?) style legs like these chairs have.  But the exaggerated curve on the arms just does it.  LOVE!  The kicker - $25 for the pair!  Of course they need re-upholstering - but these babies are beautiful!

And last of all, this one really hurt

I've been in the market for a china cabinet since we moved into this house.  My current china cabinet is from Ikea and it is too small - both for the place and the amount of dishes I have in there.  The seller originally priced it at $60 (a steal!) and then reduced it to $35. 

I actually tried to talk Chris (the boyfriend) into letting me have this one.  He's lucky that it was so big that I needed his help moving it - or it might have been a "he'll find out when I get home" type of purchase.  For a moment, I almost had him convinced.  I talked about how trendy it is now to paint these white on the outside and have a pop of color on the inside.  I could easily sell it for $200 when I finished. 

"If I sold it." 

Nail in the coffin. 

For a second he was leaning my way and then I goofed by admitting that I wanted to keep it.  Oh well, it was probably too tall for my house anyway.  And how the heck was it going to fit in the back of our Mazda Protege?