Currently viewing the category:
"Dumped & Discovered"
This is where it all began… The story of Dumped and Discovered. This is the first piece of furniture that I purchased for our business.
Meet “The Rat Dresser.” (Note: This piece was named before I started giving my treasur…
Continue Reading →
Cue the music from Sanford and Son…….
Dumped and Discovered is BACK! We spent a very lovely weekend cleaning items/painting treasures/throwing out our backs, and we loved every minute of it. Yes, Lola/Laura was in town, bossing us around. Can you tell? 
Anyway, on to the featured item. We found this beautiful art deco piece at a barn sale in DC. When I say barn sale, I really mean BARN SALE. I mean, there was a dirt road involved. And we didn’t find this piece in the front. No, siree. We climbed BEHIND the front row of junk treasures and carefully avoided the huge hole in the floor (yes, we were warned not to go back there, but we are nothing if not rule breakers). In fact, this piece is named for the man who explicitly asked us NOT to climb back there – Denny. Ah, Denny and his glorious muffintop. Said with love, of course. We adore Denny the man, especially when he gave us Denny the hutch for $50!!!
Are some of you questioning our sanity right now? Fair enough. We may have questioned it ourselves a few times along this journey, particularly when loading and unloading this beast! But she was worth the work, as you can see below. Mr. Dump went after her with his FANCY new sprayer and some great gray paint. For all you wood purists out there, please take my word that Denny needed a little paint on the barn, if you know what I mean. Shout out to my girl Honey Boo Boo!
For those of you actually reading the words and not just looking at the pretty pictures, we asked Mr. Dump very sweetly to cut a new back for Denny and we loved the original hardware so much that we kept it. Thankfully, the gorgeous mirror on top remained intact in the trip from DC to Charlotte, so all we had to do was clean that up. We think she’s a beauty!
Here she is in the booth, which has some other finds from our recent junk hunts. We hope someone takes her home and lets her live in a place with solid flooring. And no mice. We will not speak of the mice again.
As an added bonus, here’s a lovely cabinet found at an estate sale in DC. Lola had the turquoise sprayer going, and I didn’t want to risk getting a blue camera out of the deal, so I didn’t get a before picture. Sorry, but you’ve never seen how reckless she is with that thing (we only let her work on the small pieces. Sad, but true.)
We made some great progress this weekend, so more projects will be shared in the weeks ahead! I’m going to try to post at least one project a week, so thanks for hanging in there until Summer Sarah returns!
Happy junkin’!
Sarah
PS Anyone want to buy some well-loved but HUGE plants? We have to evict some from the house, and thought our lovely readers might want the first shot at them. Seriously, these things are huge, but really healthy and great listeners when there’s no one else in the house. Here they are, all lined up and waiting for their new homes!
Life is hectic. I mean H-E-C-T-I-C. As you all know, I am a teacher in my normal life and a DIY furniture upcycler in my fantasy life. I started school 5 weeks ago and it has been the hardest start in my teaching career. I decided to loop with my class this year which ended up being a really good decision. However, learning a new curriculum and adjusting to all the newness that this year has brought has been difficult. Now my weekends are spent lesson planning, grading papers, emailing parents, (the list goes on and on…) - and NOT restoring furniture. I hope all of that is about to change. Mr. Dump and I are off to buy a new sprayer and I am ready to make time for my second passion. Since it has been 2 months since my last post (please forgive me…), I’m bringing you a project that is large and in charge! Take a look at this beauty…
Seriously… Can you say 1970s??? This piece was outdated, boring, and needed a makeover in the worst possible way.
We took all of the hardware off and removed the terrible glass.
It was a rainy day so we put blankets down in the kitchen (Sorry, Mom! That’s what happens when you move out!) and painted away. It was a tight space, so Mr. Dump and I were constantly fighting over paint brushes, Cool-Whip containers of paint, and room!
This is what it looked like before I started playing with stain.
Take a look at the cabinet doors below… The one on the top has a layer of stain and the one on the bottom doesn’t. Luckily, I liked the texture that the stain provided, so I decided to stain the entire piece. We used stain that had polycrylic mixed in, and it provided a really nice protective coat. Finally, I added cute red knobs, chicken wire, and put the piece back together!
Here is what the top looks like…
And this is the final transformation!
Random question… If I start a weekly linky party, would any of you link up your projects? Thoughts? Suggestions?
As always…
Happy Junkin’!
Sarah
Let me tell you, you are some patient people. Sarah hasn’t written since July 25th (!!!), and yet you continue to faithfully check her blog, hoping for more lovely transformations of furniture. In fact, there are now 500 of you following he…
Continue Reading →Meet Blanche. She is the tall, thin, more risque cousin to Bertha from my earlier post called The Many Shades of Gray. A little background on Blanche…
My sister (Lola) and I started an annual trip to the Chartreuse and Co. barn/yard sale…
Continue Reading →Mr. Dump and I were headed to the beach a few weeks ago and (like we do on every road trip) did a little junkin’ on the way. It was a typical Saturday morning. Mr. Dump was at the wheel and I was sitting shotgun with my eyes peeled. W…
Continue Reading →Today, we bring you another installment of your favorite
series: Bringing Mom’s House into the 21st Century. We had almost the whole gang here last week. Mom and Dad came down to organize the attic and move more boxes to Virginia – wh…
I’ve been a little hesitant to write this next post… Not only do I want to keep the Ladies’ Home Journal post up FOREVER, but I’m also heavily doped up on muscle relaxers – which in reality could make this quite fun. My sister was in town this …
Continue Reading →What do Ann Curry, an ad for chafing cream, and Dumped and Discovered have in common??? THEY ARE ALL IN THE AUGUST ISSUE OF LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL!!!
I cannot believe that a business that started as a hobby has landed our little venture in the …
Continue Reading →Dump-Day with Mr. Dump
Hello, Friends. Welcome to another installment of Dump-Day with Mr. Dump!
Mrs. Dump has a slight obsession with windows. It doesn’t matter where we’re shopping, what we’re bidding o…
Continue Reading →
