my first craigslist purchase

I’m always searching Craigslist to see what I can see. 

Is there something for sale that could be cool possibly after a little bit of paint. 

I came across some book shelves. 

They looked old which I liked.

They had storage at the bottom of the shelves which I liked.

And they had some character which was most appealing to me.

The description was VERY vague.  There were no dimensions in the listing.  Plus there were 2 listings of the same thing.  The description said, “sold as set your choice”.  So it makes one wonder does the person have 4 book shelves or was it simply just a mistake.

So I called.

The gentleman said he indeed had 4.  The book shelves he had left were the ones with the door.  Yippee!  Those are the ones I wanted in the first place!  I didn’t know what I would do with the shelves that had the desk unit. 

I also asked if he had dimensions and if they were laminate or wood.  He was not at the location so he didn’t know.  OK.  The back looked laminate, I can do something with that.  I’ve painted laminate before and it was just fine.  I just didn’t want the sides and tops to be laminate.  Also it looked @ 36” wide but I couldn’t tell with the depth.

We made arrangements.  His location was close to my husband’s work.  Perfect!  My husband has a truck and he went there after work. 

He pulls up and he sees the book shelves in the picture I showed him the night before.  Apparently the gentleman had 4 but the ones in this picture were the ones he was classifying as the ones with the door.  So they weren’t the same.  Do I like the desk unit?  Could it be something I could take out?  Hmmmmm

My husband also thought they had a lot of laminate on them.  Hmmmmm  Should I go for it?  They were cheap!  The gentleman owns storage units and after someone vacates they have x number of days to get their stuff out.  He was selling bits and pieces of a lot of different stuff.  He just wanted the stuff gone so he can rent out the unit again.

So I decided to go for it.  (You could probably guess that from the blog title).

After my husband got them home, my first thought was they were DEEP!  They measure 18” and I’m not crazy about it!  I want to explore if there is anything I can do about that.  The desk door does not look like you can take it off, which I’m not trilled about.  But maybe it could be our computer desk area.  Not what I had in mind for them.  I’m also not trilled about the handles.  They look to bedishy.  At least that's an easy fix.

On the plus side, the book shelves are all wood veneer except for the back!  The back is just stapled on and can be easily taken off.  I was thinking painting it a different color or doing some strips or chevron pattern OR I was even thinking of wallpapering it.  In any of those cases it wouldn’t matter what the surface was.

So I’m happy!  My first Craigslist purchase was a success!

Now they sit in my garage waiting for me to decide where to put them and what exactly to do with them.  I’ll keep you posted.

Stay tuned…..