Give Craig's List a Chance

A few weeks ago, I saw a sort of shady looking ad on Craig's List for an antique Chinese stool for $30. The picture was horrible and the ad was poorly written. Despite the bad picture, the stool looked like it had potential, so I decided to take a chance and email the seller.

The day I went to check out the stool had a seriously rocky start. I almost bailed on the outing about 20 times. I'm so, so glad I followed my instincts, because I met the nicest, sweetest old man, Charles, who lives and works in this incredible industrial warehouse in Framingham, where he works as a carpenter and artist. He was born in China and still has family there and goes to visit as often as he can. He told me that for 40 years he's been collecting Chinese antiques and bringing them back to America. He said he thought of it more as a hobby than a business and he was ready to get rid of his huge collection.

I wish you all could have seen this warehouse FULL of antiques. It made me weak in the knees when he rolled back the huge, old squeaky door. There were piles and piles of old doors, stools, dressers, chairs, screen, pots, and everything in between.

The timing was bad and I wish that I could have spent the entire day there rummaging through everything he had and taking pictures of it all (rather than monitoring my two tired toddlers in a room full of antiques).

I didn't bring hardly any cash with me because I thought I was only coming to look at a $30 stool. I had $42 on me and this is what that sweet, wonderful man sold to me for that price. He wanted to give me more but I felt really guilty.



Charlie had two of the stools that he advertised on Craig's List. They are not exact matches, but they are really close. Plus, I like that they are subtly different. It reminds me that they are not mass produced.


This little stool (above) has a really cool hidden drawer that Grace likes to hide her treasures in. I love the shape of the feet.


I decided to put the little stool in between the couch and the leather chair as a little side table. I'm thinking about painting it, but I actually sort of like the dark, chippy look here.

Claire and Grace each got their own little stools for the bathroom. I really like the color of Claire's (above) but I think I am going to paint Grace's stool something really fun and punchy.


Here is a before and after shot of the pair of stools. I used my favorite , Restor-A-Finish, to clean the stools up.


I really like the look of stools under a console table. And it's nice to have extra seating in a pinch.
I just wish we didn't have that stupid heating grate right there!


By the way, if anyone here locally is interested in going to visit Charles and help offload some of his beautiful Chinese antiques, email me and I'll go with you (sans kids this time!).