How to Find Mid Century Furniture on Craigslist: 6 Tips

Instead of your usual Wednesday roundup, here’s a little how-to.

I got this letter from a reader recently: What is the best way to find the cool mid-century danish furniture in Craigslist?  You always seem to find the greatest pieces!  Do you have any tips?

Why yes, I do!  Would you imagine?

1. Try different search keywords — and different combos.
Try to think outside the box when it comes to keywords. Don’t just use “mid century” or “danish modern” or you’ll turn up what everyone else is turning up (and what sellers who know what they have use to identify it). Try different keywords like “retro,” “vintage,” even something like, “belonged to my grandma.” And when you search, use LOTS of keywords in different combinations to find buried treasure. Something may not appear under “sputnik lamp” but it will show up under “chrome chandelier.” Keep at it.

2. Save your best keywords and use them again.
Keep a list of your favorite — and most productive — keyword searches and use them again. Did “retro steel” turn up something interesting? Add it to the list and reuse it the next time you’re looking for stuff. I have a list of about 150 go-to keywords I use when searching Craigslist for furniture — the longer the better!

3. Use aggregators.
Sites like Craiglook and Crazedlist allow you to search multiple cities at once. Craiglook also provides an image preview, so you can see what you’re shopping for in the search results.

4. Use an image preview tool.
CraigsToolbox will change your life with their Craigslist image preview tool, available for Firefox. The add-on allows you to visually scan your search results by placing thumbnail pictures under each listing. Read: you don’t have to click on each individual listing in your search results to see what the “modern couch” or “retro sideboard” looks like. Check out the site to see a preview of the feature.

5. Be willing to travel.
Certain cities have a larger population of folks interested in mid century furnishings. If you live in a city like Chicago, 200 or more people might be all over that $300 Milo Baughman sofa someone listed yesterday. But if you search in cities just outside your metropolitan areas, especially rural ones, you’ll find the prices drop as does the competition.

6. Search often.
I find stuff on Craigslist because I look on Craigslist a few times a week. If you want to find the deals — and get them — you have to be one of the first people to see the ad and respond to it, especially if good furniture is priced low. I recommend searching on two weekdays and one weekend day and running through at least 50 keywords with each search session.

What are some of YOUR favorite Craigslist search tips?

The Vintage Bazaar: Accepting Vendor Apps!

Exciting news!  The Vintage Bazaar, the pop-up vintage market Libby Alexander and I are putting up this February at the Dank Haus in Lincoln Square, is now accepting vendor applications.

We’re looking for 40-50 dedicated vintage and antique vendors (furniture, housewares, clothes, creepy stuff, granny chic) to populate the space for our Saturday market.  It’s going to be a good time and in no way do you have to be a totally profesh vintage seller.  We don’t care if you’ve never done a market before — so long as you’re interested in bringing some stuff to the event and you’re pumped about vintage.  Booth space is just $65 ($75 if you apply after Dec. 1st) — so you really can’t lose.

We could use your help getting the word out about our search for awesome vendors!  I’ve added Tweet boxes to the bottom of all my blog posts now, so it’s really easy for you to Tweet this out.  Know anyone who sells vintage on Etsy, or has dreams of getting an antique booth at a mall — or has one already?  Send them here!

You can also sign up to get Vintage Bazaar email updates.

3 Ways to Hit the Reset Button on Your Style

A while ago I blogged about how the Back to School season makes me want to start fresh.  Writing a daily blog about home design makes you feel the same way: every other month I want a new look.  But here’s the problem — and it’s a problem I think anyone immersed in the world of how people decorate their homes has: it’s overload.  We’re taking so much information in, we don’t leave room for what’s already in us to begin with: we start to lose our own sense of personal style.  Wall decals, deer, owls, Steelcase tanker desks, the Eames rocker, turquoise furniture, cowhide rugs…  How many of you have fallen victim without asking yourselves, “Do I really like this?  Or am I just supposed to like it?”

How do we hit the reset button and find inspiration inward?  Here are three tips.

Old photos.  Dig through your personal archives.  Do you have photos of your room as a teenager?  Your dorm?  Think about a time when you didn’t care what others thought about your living space and find a picture of your living space from that time.  (If you can’t find a picture, spend some time visualizing the space from memory.)  What still inspires you?  What design rules are you breaking?  Think back to that time: what did you like most about your space?

(Glynnis Ritchie’s amazing Flickr photo set The Bedroom Project is a great source for inspiration.  The set features teenagers in their bedrooms and each photo contains a mini-interview asking the dwellers what they like best about their space.)

Clear Your Design Cache. A month ago I counted the number of design blogs I subscribed to: 147.  Then I tried a little exercise.  I took out a pen and paper and wrote down, from memory, the design blogs I like to read.  There were about 30.  So I did something bold: I unsubscribed to every single one of the design blogs I hadn’t listed on paper.  I had to do it!  I was on such deep design blog burnout I could hardly churn out new content for BackGarage.  But you know what?  It was liberating.  I realized the people who really inspired me also have their own sense of style, don’t fall victim to trends, and write with a passionate personal voice that, while focused mainly on design, occasionally deviates from it to talk about family, or work, or personal problems.

Of course if you clear your design cache (which might be blogs, might be magazines, might be your Flickr groups or favorite Etsy sellers) you might not find the same thing I found.  Maybe you’ll find you just like blogs that do product roundups, or focus only on mid century, or renovation, or on funny things found while thrifting.  But I guarantee if you pare down by making hand written list of only those favorites you can write from memory, you’ll find your personal style reflected in the choices that remain.

And don’t worry — you can add more later!

Free associate on Flickr.  Now that you’ve cleared up some mental space by clearing out your available palate of design inspiration, try seeing where your mind will lead you.  Visit Flickr and let your subconscious do the typing.  What kind of spaces do you want to look at?  Don’t censor yourself.  If you thought, “farmhouse kitchen,” go with it.  If you did, “retro beach house,” go with it.  If you want an “Ernest Hemingway writing room,” or a “punk bed,” or “Paris balcony,” I tell you — ask the oracle!  She will provide it.

As you search and find results you like, drag them to your desktop or favorite them.  Save them for your virtual scrapbook.  But keep feeding more words in — without thinking about it — until you have 20 or 30 photos to work with.

Then take a step back and admire your work.  What have you created?

As for myself, I pulled the photos you see in this post, plus many more photos of sparse German apartments, messy bedrooms, mattresses on floors, early 1980s and late 1970s squatter houses, John and Yoko love-in beds, and empty lofts.

Does this mean I’m going to re-do my space to fit these images?  Not really.  But at least I know what interests me without having it fed to me.

So what images do YOU come up with?  Feel free to put your favorite links in the comments.

How do YOU detox from design overload and rediscover your style?  Leave your tips in the comments.

Help! Why Can’t I Strip This Table?

Let’s say you’re planning to refinish a table, but first you’ve got to take some of the old surface off.  So you use a handy can of stripper.  Only after you let the stripper ooze into the table for 15 minutes and you try to scrape it off, your efforts seem to barely make a dent in removing the old finish off your furniture.

I recently had this happen with an end table Jem and I were trying to refinish.  We picked it up at a thrift store in Milwaukee about a year ago and it’s been needing some work ever since then.  Emboldened by my dad’s recent lessons in stripping and refinishing tables, we thought we might try a project on our own.  But we miserably failed!

I wrote to my dad and asked why, after several coats of stripper, we were not able to see much of a dent in the removal of the old finish.

His reply:

Here is the skinny on the “other” types of finishes besides varnish.  I did this stuff so much I forgot to tell you about this most basic test about the other “strippers” involved in refinishing.  Actually, denatured alcohol and laquer thinner are not strippers.  They are solvents that dissolve shellac or lacquer.  You were probably trying to strip a shellac or lacquer finish with stripper that is made for taking off polyurethane or other types of varnish and with stripping oil based paints.

The next time you get to the hardware store just by a quart container of denatured alcohol and one of lacquer thinner.  Then put on your gloves, dip a cotton ball in the alcohol and/or the lacquer thinner.  If the surface begins to dissolve with either (or perhaps a combination of the two), you have figured out what to use to “strip” the piece.  Try these liquids on a very inconspicous area of your floor (that has not been refinished) and see if it works on the floor just as a test.  If you read this article it has very helpful explanations.

Once again, thanks, Bob!

Read my dad’s article about staining and varnishing furniture here.  And his article about stripping furniture here.