Summer Garage Sale Finds! Pay Yourself $$ Per Hour!!

I've been busy doing summer projects and working on some garage sale finds. I found this cast iron/wooden bench at a garage sale for $10.00. Exciting! 

 It needed a coat of paint and I found this older can of paint I had in the basement. It was barn red like the bench was originally. However, veering from my usual path of using whatever was available, I decided to buy some blue paint for this project. I also decided to repaint the cast iron because there was a little bit of rust in spots. Here is the can of paint I rejected and some free painting materials I got from Menards. The paint cost me about $17.00 for both the quart of blue and one spray can of brown metallic.

I found this cast iron stand at a garage sale for $2.00. I decided to paint it matching colors.

 
It was a pretty intensive project and took me a number of hours. I needed to put a few coats on the old, dry wood. The whole bench needed to be taken apart to paint it too.

 A $10.00 bench and a $2.00 stand and $17.00 worth of paint and some elbow grease and here is the end result! I am so pleased! 

I had some paint left over and during the drying times, I moved onto some other projects. I don't have a "before" photo of this but it is a plant stand and I paid $1.00 for it last year at a garage sale. It was gray and rusty.

Here is the end result, matching my bench and stand! 

I bought this fountain at a garage sale last week for $5.00. I thought for sure it wouldn't work but it does! It has a solar panel that makes it run. The woman said she paid $70.00 for it last year. I'm glad

 I took a risk!

I bought this bench at a garage sale a couple years ago for $10.00. It needed a fresh coat of paint now so I decided to paint it blue like the other one.

 Here it is in front of my garden. I love to sit on it between weeding rows!

I bought this glider at a garage sale a few years ago for $5.00. I am going to buy another can of spray paint and paint this brown to match the rest of the outdoor furniture.

Altogether I have a cast iron garden bench: $10.00. A cast iron stand: $2.00. A garden bench: $10.00. A plant stand: $1.00. A fountain: $5.00 and a glider: $5.00. Total $33.00. Add paint: $10.00 quart of blue. $7.00 spray paint and $7.00 for another can for the glider. Call it $25.00 with tax. $58.00 for all the outdoor garden furniture shown here plus quite a bit of elbow grease! I have about 8 hours in to painting and call it 8 hours of garage saling. If the items as they are listed above cost, say, $75.00, $25.00, $12.00, $70.00, $39.00 and $79.00 new, that is a total of $300.00. Granted, the items are not new, so, lets call it $200.00 altogether for the items. Working 18 hours on the project, I was paid $12.50 an hour (or $18.75 an hour if we called it $300.00). Pretty good pay!

Happy Savings! ~