Spring, and the official start to estate and yard sale season is here. Here in Atlanta, you can usually find a halfway decent estate or yard sale almost every weekend year-round. But no doubt about it, spring is when the most sales start to pop up. Last weekend, I scored an embarrassment of riches at three different estate sales. My favorite find, hands down, was this fabulous vintage ice cream sign.
For three dollars! At The Breeze Inn, our vacation home on Tybee Island, I have several old soft drink signs.
But I reaaalllly wanted an old ice cream sign. Can’t wait til we head down there in a couple weeks to hang my new treasure. Last weekend was also Scott’s Antique Market weekend, so I was a busy bee, buzzing around there and all those estate sales. Here’s a great antique painting from a New England estate I scored there. Don’t you just love the pink sails?
I also found a great old iron crib at Scott’s. It was painted safety yellow, so I took it home and painted it a soft, neutral gray. These cribs aren’t safe to use for babies, but I think it would look great used as a daybed, piled with gorgeous pillows. My other favorite Scott’s find was a fun metal sign saying NO DIVING! LIFEGUARDS NOT ON DUTY.This is headed for my booth at Seaside Sisters on Tybee. I love it, but not as much as I love the worn old “No Swimming, Fishing or Crabbing” sign I found in an antique shop on the Jersey Shore the day my grandbaby Molly was born three years ago. It has pride of place at The Breeze Inn. At a moving sale last weekend, I bought a shabby little brown dresser, intending to paint it. And while I was at Scott’s, I met a dealer selling a new kind of paint I’d been reading about, CeCe Caldwell’s. It’s a lot like the Annie Sloan chalk paint that’s been the rage for the past year or so, but this paint is made in South Carolina, instead of England, so it’s less expensive. I bought a can of a color called Destin Gulf Green, and gave it a test run on my homely little dresser. After distressing and waxing it, and lining the drawers with some fun gift wrap, it’s ready for a new home.
Those aqua matte pottery vases on top were a score from the Winona Park neighborhood yard sale on Saturday. The kitschy shell art lamp came from the same house. As did a stack of six vintage Homer Laughlin diner plates. Love the horse design.
Speaking of horses, I scored this pair of horse paint-by-numbers at a scary sale in another in-town neighborhood. Pencilled on the back was the original 15 cent pricetag. I paid lots more than that, but I do love PBNs.
On Friday, when I should have been working on the new book, I hit an estate sale in a warehouse and found this fabulous folk art windmill, which was obviously the work of somebody’s granddad.
At that same sale, was this funky popsicle stick lamp. Probably a summer camp or vacation bible school project.
But undoubtedly, the big kahuna score of the weekend was the vintage Wedgewood 1950s gas stove I found on Craigslist. What will I do with it? Stay tuned. It is in excellent condition, and the owner swears it was working in her last home. I have had a soft spot in my heart (Mr. MKA would say it’s my head that’s soft) for vintage stoves since I inherited my late Aunt Julia’s 1950s gas Roper stove. We designed our kitchen in our former house around that stove, and it worked great. I had a repair-man examine the Roper before we hooked it up, and he explained that there is very little that can go wrong with stoves of that era. I didn’t take a photo of my new old stove, but here’s a picture of the exact same stove. The antique appliance store in Clayton, Georgia has a similar, restored stove listed at $9,200! Mine needs some polishing on the chrome, but otherwise I think this is my stove.
Love! And now that I’ve had my junk fix, it looks like I have no choice but to get busy on the NEW TFB. For those of you who are new here, that means The Friggin’ Book. Which is how I actually make a living. But my publisher is pretty funny. They won’t actually pay me unless I write the damn thing. Sigh.
Hi Mary Kay,
I like the popsicle stick lamp! I think it has a uniquely creative, artistic design. And the plate with the harness race horse; do you think that might have been a plate from a racetrack’s restaurant? Why else would it specifically have a harnessed race horse, rather than just a horse? And the other piece of “junk” I like…the stove. Anything ’50’s era, from my era, brings back such memories. Thank you, as always, for the trip back.
The only few ‘antiques’ we have are 1. a ‘Mobo’ metal riding horse from the 40’s. It was my husband’s when he was a boy (born ’46) and our girls have used Mobo (it’s brand name), our neice and nephew have used it, and our youngest grandchildren are now using it. 2- a tapestry painting (of a monk in a garden in Italy)done by my husband’s grandfather, about 70 years ago. We will not sell either:-)
Dang girl….. I am loving all the junk you found! That ice cream sign is one of my favorites of all your finds. I still can’t believe you only paid $3 for it! But that stove…… wow…. if it looks as good as the one you pictured you are one lucky gal! Any stoves similar to that I have found around here are either caked in grease or so far out of my price range it’s ridiculous! I can’t wait to see where you use yours……