Dumpster Diving

Unfortunately, I do not have a green thumb.  I have inherited this trait (or lack thereof) from my mom.  (Sorry mom, don't be sad.)  My mom is better than me, though, because she can at least keep houseplants alive most of the time.

Sadly, I cannot.

When Joey and I first moved to Dallas, we bought a very, very large houseplant. One could almost consider it a tree.  Anyway, Home Despot had mis priced it and it was only $19.99 or something like that. We had been looking for a silk plant anyway so we bought the live one instead, since it was so cheap.

Six months later, the plant was dead and moldy. (And I watered it, too!  Not like the last one...) There were large clusters of white spores growing on the leaves that weren't black and, after a month of looking at it that way and determining that no, it wasn't getting any healthier, Joey and I decided to throw it away.

The thing weighed about 40 pounds and was cumbersome to carry.  I shoved it out onto the front porch and Joey carried it to the Dumpster.

Henry and I followed at a safe distance, hoping to steer clear of the creepy white spores that Joey was now completely covered in.

"What are we going to put in its place?" Joey asked when we were back inside, staring at the vacant section of wall that used to contain our dead, moldy plant.

"I'd like to find a chair to put there, you know so people can sit down to take their shoes off."  Nobody wears shoes in my house; no way, no how.  "I saw some at TJ Maxx a couple months ago, they were about $20."

What I was looking for was a kind of unusual dining room style chair that had character.  We headed over to TJ Maxx a few days later to see what they had.  It wasn't pretty.  They had fantastic chairs, but they were all $90. 

So then we went to a thrift shop that I'd been to once before.  I am not a good thrift store shopper.  I usually wind up looking everything over and settling on something that I don't really even like and that is probably junk anyway.

Such was almost the case this time.  However, Joey determined that the chair I was looking at was Very Wobbly, so he said, "Let's go home."

We did.

Last night, we went on a walk to the store and, lo and behold, by the Dumpster sat The Chair.

"Look, Jenna, there's a chair!"  Joey pointed.

I saw it and squealed.  "It's exactly what I wanted!"  The chair was black painted wood, high-backed and had a very ugly seat cushion.  The frame and construction were great, though.  It was probably 15 years old, but it was a very nice chair.

"You really like it?"  Joey said, sitting in the chair and wiggling around test for sturdiness.

"Oh yes," I said.  "I'm going to take sandpaper to it and rough up the finish a little bit, then I'm going to take off the ugly seat cushion and replace it with something, probably in a shade of green."

"OK," he said, and hoisted the chair.  We turned around and carried it back to our house where we set it outside the front door.

And, thus, we got our chair for FREE.  It's great, hopefully someday I can post pictures of it.  Some days I really wish we had a camera...