When I started blogging I said that I would put on investigators cap and start looking exploring 'thrift stores'. I have come to realise that in South Africa we have Second hand stores and Charity stores (I will write a blog about these stores). I must admit that what I am looking for is affordable furniture and now in hind sight I am not totally sure that I am going to find that.
Click here to read my very post Blog beginings
When starting on this quest, I was hoping to find furniture that was in a fairly good condition and well priced. I have sold second hand furniture before and to be honest I basically gave it away on the pretext that its very hard to sell. These items were a large wooden desk and wooden cabinet that went with it.
Looking back at the American bloggers, I see that the American thrift stores appear to sell second hand items at a really affordable rate compared to what we are getting here. One blogger that has inspired me to begin this blog has a page about thrift stores. On this page there are photographs of 2 gorgeous wooden round side tables that were being sold for $15 for the set, at todays exchange rate of 13.28 that is only R199.25! These are not the cheap chipboard tables or laminate tables that are in our stores today.
Another photograph showed a Bergere chair that looked very similar in design to this one pictured below.
It was a lovely wooden chair with pink fabric, definitely a perfect make over chair. I so desperately would love one or two of these chairs to put into my home. The thing that totally blew me away was the fact that this gorgeous little chair was being sold for only $8. Using todays exchange rate of 13.28 to the dollar that makes an amount of R106.24. (The fabric will possibly cost even more per meter).
After the few second hand stores that I have been into I would say that finding a chair like this for around R500.00 would be a great find.
I have taken into consideration that it's possible that $8 is a lot of money in a US budget but after looking at the following link you will see that what they earn is in line with what we as South African's are earning.
http://www.payscale.com/index/US/Job
Right now to be honest I am feeling quite discouraged as far as finding decent affordable second hand furniture is concerned, but I will keep on investigating and updating you. Granted I have only been into about 5 stores. I purposely started with stores that were in poorer areas as I felt that that would be the place with the cheapest deals, but now in hindsight I am thinking that its not very logical thinking as people in poorer areas will buy and sell according to their budgets. I will be investigating this theory and venturing out into other areas over the next couple of weeks.
Most second hand stores sell trinkets and ornaments and old framed old pictures. The frames are very plain and nothing to write home about in my humble opinion. From what I have seen they start at R150.00. That's even more than the Begere chair!
I have found a really nice second hand store that is not very far from where I live. They have affordable furniture and bunch of other items. I picked up these ornaments.
My intention was to spray paint the elephant silver, but my eldest daughter has protested against that, saying the elephant is hand painted and I need to leave it like that ... so we'll see what I decide to do with it. Must admit that I do like the way it looks and at this stage I am wanting to change my lounge curtains to a silver so the natural grey colour will fit in with that colour scheme.
I absolutely love elephants and I was so excited when I found this particular is because its truck is raised. My mother would tell me that this brings good luck (no I am not all superstitious), but it nice to have small reminders of my mom and some positive reinforcement around the home. This belief as also confirmed by an African painter I met in Durban. He said an elephant with its truck raised is a happy elephant! When looking this up (on google of course) I see that the elephant is the symbol of strength, power, stability and wisdom and that when the truck is raised it will shower good fortune on all who walk past it.
On this note of good fortune I will end. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, and leave me a comment. I just love interacting with people.
Lets hope that you get showered with blessings.
