Last weekend we drove two hours north to Arlington, Virginia so Clara could spend time with her cousin Elsa. It was also an excuse for my cousin Travis and me to sport matching “daddy-plaid” outfits — shorts, flip-flops and identical Kettler bikes (both of which turned out to be his great craigslist finds).
While we were there, Elsa’s mom Cat (Sherry’s longtime friend whom we introduced to my cousin back in 2007) took us to a charming shop in Old Town Alexandria called Red Barn Mercantile. The store was full of beautiful pieces, but our attention was immediately drawn to a bowl of vintage printing press letters.
For six dollars we picked up a “C” so Clara could join our collection of original letters and numbers: 7, J, S, L, O, V, E. The first three were bought at a NYC flea market weeks after we started dating on 7/7/05 (hence our affection for the number 7) and the others came from a DC flea market a few years later. We even searched for an uppercase “B” for Burger but only found lowercase pieces that looked like a backwards “d.” The hunt for a proper uppercase B continues.
That small purchase was nice, but the trip’s real jackpot was another six-dollar find that left us in disbelief. Ready for this?
Six dollars didn’t just get us hardware…
…or even a single cabinet…
…we got six cabinets total. All for six dollars. Not each — total.
If you’re skeptical like I was when Sherry called me from inside the store (I stayed in the car with Clara who was napping), here’s the proof:
We found them at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Alexandria. They were selling them for a dollar each because the cabinets had come from a hotel donation — apparently a buyer had returned a number of them, so the store marked the leftover pieces at a dollar to move them quickly. The total ended up being $6.30 with tax — still a remarkable deal.
For anyone concerned about pests: I’m extremely cautious after a terrible bedbug experience in NYC, so I thoroughly inspected every cabinet before bringing them home and did another check once we were inside. Bed bugs and their droppings are visible if you inspect seams, crevices and surfaces closely. They prefer softer materials like upholstery and mattresses rather than slick surfaces, so solid wood cabinets are low risk. Still, when you’re buying used furniture it’s smart to inspect carefully and, if possible, leave items in a garage or sunroom for a day or two before bringing them into living spaces.
Miraculously, we fit two cabinets in our Altima along with our travel gear: one in the trunk and one in the front seat. Sherry rode in back with the baby, the pack-and-play and our folded dog crate, while the ReStore held the remaining four until my dad — who happened to be nearby — drove up in his Honda Pilot to retrieve them. We’re usually the ones without a way to haul large items far from home, so this felt like a little bit of serendipity.
These cabinets don’t look or feel like cheap one-dollar pieces. They’re solid wood and have thoughtful interior fittings, including slide-out shelves — a nice surprise for such a bargain.
We plan to use them in our built-in office workstation. The layout we have in mind is two cabinets on the left, an open space for a chair, two in the center, another chair space, and two on the right — giving each chair a 30″ opening. Our chairs are 24″ wide, so this will provide ample wiggle room compared to our current makeshift desk made from a door.
Before they move in permanently they’ll get a coat of primer and glossy white paint. Since they appear to be solid wood, the paint should adhere and last well. We’ll probably keep the interiors unpainted wood — many white built-ins use natural interiors to hide marks and smudges. The cabinets are about 26″ tall while our chairs are 27″ with arms, so we’ll need to build up each cabinet pairing by a few inches to reach a comfortable desk height of roughly 30″. That could be done with a simple painted box on top, an open shelf, or built-up bases from the bottom — we haven’t decided yet.
We’re relieved they weren’t the taller 35″ base cabinets you often see, which are much harder to modify. These cabinets were deep enough for a desk without extensive rebuilding, which made them an ideal find after months of searching for affordable office solutions. (We did have less luck finding cheap file cabinets and eventually bought a new system from Ikea.)
Since not everyone will stumble on a dollar-cabinet windfall, we’ll share the other places we searched and the alternative solutions we considered — everything that went into our eight-month office hunt — in a follow-up. In the meantime, what’s the best under-ten-dollar purchase you’ve ever made? Was it a piece of clothing, a house find, or maybe a memorable night out that changed your life? We’d love to hear your best bargain stories.