One of the BEST parts about moving is that I have an excuse to completely and totally re-decorate from the ground up.  Like many people I’m sure, I was forced to furnish my place almost exclusively in Ikea particle-board shite-balls brand for the last 5 years, mosly due to:

1. Poorness.  I am not a rich person.  I do not get my furnishings financed from my parents, like all the spoiled bitches I see in Anthropologie the week before University, buying $375.00 frothy duvet covers and patterned bedskirts with fucking handmade fringe from tribes in Mongolia on them.  I have to buy shit myself with the money that I make myself at my job. So Ikea is a good option.
2. Laziness.  Dude, say what you will about Ikea, but it has a fucking brilliant business model.  You can buy EVERYTHING there.  And it has something for EVERY style of house and EVERY funky-ass room measurement that exists on Earth.  So, it’s pretty easy to just buy everything from there.

Just to clarify… I am probably just as poor and lazy as ever.  However, now that I am completely obsessed with antiquing and vintage-digging, I am VERY excited to furnish my entire house in vintage furniture.

And I mean ENTIRELY.  I have sold or Goodwilled the following pieces of furniture prior to my move:

• Couch
• Nightstands
• Full-Wall Bookshelf
• Bedframe
• Desk Chairs
• Desk (NOT SOLD YET.  IT COULD BE YOURS!)
• Wardrobe (NOT SOLD YET. IT COULD BE YOURS!)
• A bunch of mismatched bone-china plates.  I haven’t listed these yet, but if you want them, tell me and they’re yours.

I am also getting rid of my box spring.  Seriously, what the fuck is a box spring for?  Does it have an actual functional purpose?   How is it different than a fucking mattress-sized slab of ten dollar wood?  I’ve had this conversation with like 20 people in the last month, and nobody seems to know what the fuck it is for. 

Incidentally, if you want my fabulous box spring, it could be yours.

This means that I am currently watching TV by sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating dinner off of a margarine lid while surrounded by stacks of books.  BUT IT’S WORTH IT.  Because now, all I have to bring over to my new place is my table, my teak tinted glass vintage credenza, and my vintage teak coffee table.  Which means my move will be super-easy.

It ALSO means that I get to replace ALL THAT SHIZZ with either fancy new stuff, or vintage-sourced wicked-cool stuff.  The first thing that I wanted to get was a low, long, mid-century teak dresser for the bedroom… which led to some good news and some bad news…

The GOOD news is that I knew exactly what I wanted because I’m super specific and anal about that shizz.

The BAD news is that what I wanted is typically sold for a large amount of money. 

The good news is that I’m really good at craigslist.

The bad news is that craigslist can be sneaky.

The good news is that I am also super-sneaky.

The trick is that you have to try and find an ad from someone who can’t really describe things well (so it doesn’t show up for other people when they search, so they can’t snatch it up), or someone who doesn’t really know the potential of the item they are selling.

I found someone who didn’t know the potential of what they were selling.  This was the picture from the ad, entitled “Dresser – Walnut Coloured”:

All fuzzy, you can’t really see too much, and the description was really, really vague.  BUT… can you see the tapered legs?  The molded handles?  The long, low-profile, mid-century style?

So I took a gamble, rented a zipcar, and went to go pick it up.  The mirror attached was vile.  There was some damage on the top.  There were horrible, after-market castor-wheels tacked onto the legs. But you could tell she was gorgeous.

I got it for $50.00.  FIFTY DOLLARS.  That’s not even enough for a PAX drawer-insert at Ikea.

Took it to the new place, got rid of the mirror, chucked the horrible castors… and I plan on re-finishing it next week.  But even before a sand, stain, and varnish… tell me she doesn’t already look BEAUTIFUL: