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?

Cheap to Choice: Recovering Lampshades

This is a guest post by Lara Hightower.

Great merciful heavens, it has been dark and gloomy in Chicago lately – Sunday’s lovely weather notwithstanding. This seemed like a really good time to dive into the metric ton of old lampshades I have lying around, earmarked for recovering. There’s nothing like lamplight to warm up a room now that the Chicago fall is settling in. I’ve been lucky and  have found several charming old lamps lately – especially chunky glass ones, of which I am particularly fond – but they’re rarely partnered with attractive shades. My daily walk through Andersonville takes me right by the windows of White Attic, where the most amazing, graphically colorful lampshades are displayed. I started wondering how hard it would be to recover lampshades, and a new collection was born.

This is what happens when I decide to start a new project: I start collecting. And collecting. And then I collect some more.  And then I start thinking of other things that I need for the project, like glue, fabric, and information. Years pass, and my friends start secretly talking about me behind my back, wondering what the hell is up with the pile of old lampshades in my apartment.

This project was particularly difficult for me to dive into, because it involved using some of my stores of fabric. I have a thing for fabric. I love vintage textiles, tablecloths, bedspreads, curtains, and so on. I’m always looking for a way to display them in a useful manner, but then when it’s time to cut into them, I balk. Not this time! I was going to start whittling down my stack of lampshades, and my vintage fabric treasures were my ticket to success.  This is how I did it.

1.  I have a great article from an old Martha Stewart magazine that tells how to make lampshades from scratch by buying the lampshade frames and something called “self-adhesive styrene.” I did a bit of investigating, and it appeared that it would be quite costly, so I figured I would start by recovering lampshades already built by someone more diligent than myself. I found lampshades at yard sales and thrift stores, such as The Brown Elephant, Village Thrift, and the Salvation Army. I didn’t spend more than $3 on any of them. Things to consider while shopping for shades to recover: only white or cream-colored shades will work, since any older patterns will shine through once the lamp is turned on. Also, check for brittleness; older shades crack quite easily. The shade should be in very good shape, without dents or tears.

2.  The fabrics I used on the two smaller shades were purchased in thrift stores; the fabric on the largest shade is a micro-suede that I bought at the Textile Discount Outlet for $9.95 a yard. (By the way, do you know about the Textile Discount Outlet? It’s at 2121 W. 21^st Street in Chicago, and it is fabulous. Three stories of the biggest selection of fabric and trim that you have ever seen in your life. I have rarely noticed any fabric priced over $14.95/yard; the majority of it is under $10 a yard.) You can also use any other fabric you like – curtains, sheets, anything that has a print and catches your eye. I even have a skirt with a wild graphic print that I plan to use for a shade. I used a suede, a chintz, and a cotton print for these three shades, and I didn’t notice that one worked better then another. 3.  The first step is to create a pattern with your lampshade. You do this by spreading out a huge piece of paper, laying the lampshade on its side – seam down – and rolling the shade across the paper. (Kraft paper works well, and you can buy a huge roll of it for $9.95 at Home Depot. I use it for many different things around the house, so it’s really nice to have a roll on hand.) Trace the top edge of the shade until the seam is in the same position as when you started (i.e. a full revolution). This next part is vital: don’t lift the shade up when you get back around to the seam. Instead, without moving the shade, move your pencil to its bottom edge. Then roll the shade backwards along the same path, and trace the bottom edge until the shade is back to its starting position. If you move or lift the shade, you’ll mess up the pattern, so be very careful.

4. Cut the pattern out, allowing an inch or two extra on the sides. This is important, because you’ll need that extra fabric to fold over the top and bottom edges of the shade in order to leave a clean edge.

5. Pin the paper pattern to the fabric. Do not be lazy and try to cut the fabric around the pattern without pinning. This will not work. I cannot tell you how I know this, but trust me. Also, if you are using a fabric with a print, make sure you are cutting the fabric so that the print is right-side up. Again, I cannot tell you how I know this, I just do.

6. Do not use your favorite piece of fabric for your first lampshade, for you will make mistakes and ruin your favorite piece of fabric. Let us pause for a brief moment while I weep.

7. Once you get the fabric cut, you are going to take it outside, OUTSIDE, I tell you, and coat the back of it with a spray adhesive.  I used 3M  multipurpose adhesive . It got over everything. I had it in my hair. I had it in my eyelashes. I’m still peeling it off of my fingertips. You do not want to spray this in your house. Also, beware of sudden changes in wind direction. The good news is that IT WORKS. So well that your fabric will stick to itself. I would recommend getting an extra pair of hands your first time through on this, because it’s not easy to make the fabric do what you want it to do once you’ve sprayed the adhesive. I found that the easiest thing to do was to lay the fabric (print down, glue up) on a clean surface while you move on to the next step.

8.   It took some trial and error, but I think the easiest way to get the fabric on the lampshade is to roll the lampshade onto the sticky fabric, much like you did when you made your pattern. The tricky part here is to make sure that you’re rolling it on as straight as possible, leaving the fabric overlapping equally on the top and bottom. The first lampshade had me tearing my hair out, because I kept running out of fabric on the top of the shade and having excess on the bottom. It is hard at first and quite frustrating, but, by my third attempt, I had already gotten better at it. The good news is that the spray adhesive doesn’t bond permanently right away; if you need to, you can peel the fabric up and reposition it. Even reapplying the adhesive twice on the first shade didn’t seem to interfere with the eventual bonding of the fabric. The spray adhesive, as it turns out, is a very forgiving glue.

9.  Now smooth the fabric over the shade, because there will be air bubbles. Then smooth the fabric some more. And when you’re through smoothing the fabric, smooth it a little bit more. Let me just say that my first shade attempt is currently sitting on my kitchen table with tons of air bubbles in it. Smooth, people, until your fingertips are bleeding from your efforts.

10. If you went a little crazy and have three or four inches hanging over the edges of the shade, trim those to no more than two inches. You want the inside of the shade to be neat, as it will be visible from certain angles. The light shining through your shade will also illuminate any messy work.

11.  I used Aleene’s Fabric Fusion to fold the edges over and glue them to the inside of the shade. Once again, my handy-dandy binder clips  held the fabric in place while the glue dried. (I’m recommending a new marketing campaign for the binder clip folks – “Binder Clips: A Crafter’s Right Hand.”) Drying  is a lengthy process; I would clip the fabric for at least an hour to make sure it bonds.

And there you have it. I could have used trim on the shades – again, Textile Discount Outlet has bazillions of trim options – but  I decided to go simple with them the patterns were pretty busy. Also, fringe and ball trim tend to gather dust, and I haven’t quite figured out how to combat that.

Three down, fourteen thousand to go… bring on the dark Chicago winter! I’ll be ready.

Lara Hightower is a yard sale freak who spends way too much time collecting crazy things she can’t find space for.

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.

How to Stage A Yard Sale: 10 Dos and Don’ts

This is a guest post by Renee Prisble Una.

Notes on a day spent in suburbia.

• Do put representative items near the curb to advertise the type of things you are selling. For example: put that crazy ’60s style lamp near the curb to let everyone know you’ve got crazy vintage stuff in your sale. This helps with shopping from the curb. Whenever my husband and I see just kids stuff, we never even get out of the car.

• Do put up only clear, easy to read signs on busy streets. Fancy fonts look great on your computer but are impossible to read doing 30mph.

• Do coordinate with your community to hold all your garage sales on one weekend.

• Do you really expect someone to buy that? Don’t include obvious trash or dirty and neglected items in your sale — it makes all your items look like shit. I am instantly repulsed and lump all your goods together as gross and not worth buying.

• Don’t talk badly about your husband while obviously hocking his prized tools.  This just makes everyone uncomfortable.

• Do limit yourself to two beers an hour. Also, don’t suggest that your mirror would go well on my ceiling.  It makes everyone uncomfortable.

• Please price everything. Don’t display something you really don’t want to sell and then ask me to make an offer. This can only lead to your embarrassment when I lowball what you love.

• Don’t try to sell me anything. I have eyes, I can see what you’ve got.

• Do be an older person with a great sense of humor. Why are all the old people so nice and funny and my peers so boring?

• Do price your items to sell, I mean who are we fooling, its a yard sale.

Renee Prisble Una is a local artist who makes sculpture and installations and teaches at Loyola University and Wright College.