I love chairs. I really do. If there’s a chair on the sidewalk with a sign that reads “FREE” there’s a pretty good chance it’s coming home with me. Sometimes, although not often enough according to my husband, I reject a chair. Yes, even I have chair standards. Now, what’s funny about this chair, is I saw it and didn’t pick it up because it looked like too much work. My husband DID pick it up and brought it home. Do you see the irony here? He doesn’t like all of my chairs but he contributes to the obsession?
The chair arms are too ugly here and I wonder what’s underneath all that vinyl?
Oh, another bad discovery…so many little staples and nails. This equals too much work.
Someone really wanted the “pleather” to stay put!
Another not very good sign was the lack of interesting wood underneath all of the vinyl and pleather.
I didn’t end up keeping this chair. I stuck a sign on it in my front yard with a sign that read “FREE” and within a day, it was gone. You’d think I’d stop bringing chairs home but no. I just hung one from a big nail in our garage. I hope nobody notices…
What do you like to collect? Do you like to bring home junk and turn it into treasure? Are your eyes drawn to “free” signs like mine?
Go Gingham related links:
Using nature to decorate your home – frugal and fancy decorating
Dumpster diving woes: please don’t put a cover on dumpsters!
Green living: once a month garbage collection
Found treasures for decorating your home
Green and frugal living – the sweet spot where green and frugal meet
Go Gingham 
No WAY!
My name is Michelle and I have a chair problem as well.
I should take a picture of the living room sometime. Different eras…different shapes….different colors, it’s pretty crazy!
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So glad we can share like this about our issues! I have all of our outside chairs in our basement right now (still waiting for the sunny spring weather to appear…) and they’re all treasures I’ve found while out running or passing through a neighborhood. With a little fabric, sewing, and a staple gun, you’ve got a real gem!
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I will buy anything at a garage sale or free sale. I’ll see something and go, who would like this…? Then I’ll buy it for them, and store the present for months until their birthday. I save so much money this way, it’s not even funny, and the gifts are unique! They can’t be bought at the store: they have history and charactor. I recently bought a giant pillow shaped like a hershey’s kiss… it was my niece’s favorite birthday present!
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Ellen,
This is a great way to save on the cost of gifts! And, I love it when every item has a story…where it came from, where it was discovered. I have a gift box (it’s just a cardboard box with a lid) in our basement where I put things I’ve purchased at garage/estate sales during the year. Sometimes, I pick something up so far in advance, I forget who I bought it for! Oh well….
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I have heard so much about you over at Today’s Creative Blog so I just had to see all the wonderful ideas for myself. I am off to look around. Green living is such a great thing to have in common and I hope we can share ideas!
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Jenn! I love your site! We are 2 peas out of the same pod!
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There is something about that chair that reminds me of an old fashioned woman sliding her dress off her shoulders. Weird.
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That woman would probably slip right off the chair herself! While I love the wood on the back of it, the pleather/plastic/vinyl-y stuff was too much. Also, I couldn’t use the cushion stuffing inside. Too icky. I usually like to re-purpose and re-use the foam rubber. It’s too expensive to buy new.
Thanks Kirsten!
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I, too, am obsessed with curb chairs! Thankfully, our station wagon is messed up, so I’ve been driving the Mustang around, and it’s trunk will barely fit a folding chair. I would seriously take home every chair I saw if I could. I saw one on Tuesday, and it took everything I had not to go get some cord and strap it to the roof.
I recently got two really old chairs at a thrift store that I hope to refinish…they’re going to take a ton of work, but they are just so neat looking! I will definitely send you a link when I get pictures up, since I know you’ll appreciate the chair finds 🙂
Oh, and I’m also bad about cardboard boxes. Our city won’t recycle them, so I want to keep them to use them for craft projects or some kind of upcycling project…I just hate for them to go to the landfill!
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Karen,
I’d love to see pictures of the chairs! You can also add them to Go Gingham’s Facebook Page. Chair obsessions seem to common amongst bloggers!
You can also use cardboard boxes in your garden. I break them down (flatten them) and place them on top of the dirt, then add mulch or straw, depending on where they are in my yard. They help keep weeds down, hold moisture in, and over a soaker hose they keep the water from leaving the garden area.
Thanks for the comment.
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That is such a neat idea about using the boxes in the garden! I absolutely loathe weeding, so anything that can cut down on that is fine by me! Thanks for the tip 🙂
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Love a free chair, hard to resist. I have several!
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