Weekend Finds in Arlington: Vintage Letters and Six Cabinets for $6.30
Last weekend we drove two hours north to Arlington, Virginia so Clara could spend time with her cousin Elsa. While there, my cousin Travis and I ended up matching in daddy-plaid shirts, shorts, flip-flops, and identical Kettler bikes that we scored together on Craigslist.
Cat, Elsa’s mom, took us to a lovely shop in Old Town Alexandria called Red Barn Mercantile. The place was full of beautiful pieces, but the thing that grabbed our attention most was a bowl of vintage printing press letters. For six dollars we picked up an uppercase “C” to add to our small collection (we already had 7, J, S, L, O, V, E). The first three letters were purchased at a New York flea market shortly after we started dating on 7/7/05, and the others came from a DC flea market a few years later. We also hunted for an uppercase “B” for Burger, but only found lowercase pieces that read like reversed “d”s—so the search continues.
That little vintage letter was a fun find, but the real shocker was what Sherry discovered next: six complete cabinets being sold for a dollar each. Yes, six cabinets for a total of six dollars. The cabinets originally arrived at a local Habitat for Humanity ReStore after being donated by a hotel. Someone had returned a stack of them, and the ReStore decided to clear them out quickly at a steep discount.
If that sounds unbelievable, here’s the proof. We found the cabinets at the Habitat ReStore in Alexandria and they were, indeed, marked down to one dollar apiece. Sherry called me with the details while Clara napped in the car. I went in afterward to check them out and made sure they were clean and free from any issues—especially bedbugs, since I’ve had a prior experience that made me very cautious.
When you’re checking secondhand furniture for pests, look closely for tiny bugs or dark droppings in seams and crevices. Bed bugs are visible to the naked eye if you inspect thoroughly, and they tend to prefer soft, porous surfaces and hidden corners rather than glossy cabinets. After a careful inspection at the store and again at home, we felt comfortable bringing them inside.
Transporting the cabinets was another adventure. Miraculously, two fit into our Altima along with our travel gear: the trunk held one, and the other rode up front while Sherry sat in back with Clara, the pack-and-play, and our folded dog crate. My dad, who happened to be nearby for a meeting and drives a Honda Pilot, picked up the remaining four. It was a lucky break—normally we don’t have an easy way to haul big items when we’re far from home.
With tax the total ended up being $6.30. Not bad for six solid-wood cabinets that don’t look or feel cheap. Inside, they’ve got thoughtful details like slide-out shelves that make them more functional than you’d expect for thrift-store finds.
We plan to use these cabinets to build a built-in office workstation. The idea is to place two cabinets against the left wall, leave a space for a chair, add two in the middle with another chair space, and finish with two on the right—creating a symmetrical desk area with two seating openings. That layout will give us 30 inches for each chair opening, which works well with our 24-inch-wide chairs and provides more wiggle room than our current DIY desk setup.
Before they move into their permanent spots, the cabinets need a coat of primer and glossy white paint. They appear to be solid wood, so paint should adhere and wear well. We’ll likely leave the interiors in natural wood, which hides scuffs and marks better—many white built-ins use wood interiors for that reason. We’ll document the painting process and materials as we go.
The cabinets are about 26 inches tall, while our chairs measure 27 inches, so we’ll raise the work surface to the ideal 30-inch desk height. I’m considering building a simple box on top of each cabinet pair and painting it to match, creating a seamless look. We haven’t decided whether that top section will be an open shelf or a solid faced panel, but either option should be straightforward to execute.
Finding suitable secondhand cabinets was surprisingly hard—base cabinets are often 35 inches tall and difficult to modify, and upper cabinets are usually only 12 inches deep, which doesn’t make a practical desk. After a thorough search and many alternatives considered, these cabinets were exactly what we needed. It felt especially good after we couldn’t find affordable secondhand file cabinets and ended up buying a new system for the office.
We’ll share the rest of our research and the other options we explored soon—maybe our experience will help someone else hunting for low-cost cabinets for a DIY built-in. Meanwhile, what’s the best under-ten-dollar purchase you’ve ever made? Whether it was clothing, something for the house, or a serendipitous moment that changed your life, we’d love to hear about it.