Are you a yard saler?

Have you ever been minding your very own business, driving down the road with cute hair and red lipstick and flip-flops and Taylor Swift?

And then?

You heard the siren’s song.

You see the thing that makes your heart beat faster, and your eyes blink 17 times.

The thing that makes your hands reflexively grip and un-grip the steering wheel.

The thing sending you an engraved invitation because it called your name from the street corner.

Right there.

On the curb.

Sparkling in all its glory.

Shining in all its fluorescent, hand-marked, arrowed glory.

A multi-family yard sale sign.

You follow the sign.

Which turns into the next sign.

And the next sign.

You twist and turn and lose your way and find it again and get back on track and finally arrive at the destination.

Sometimes it’s lame. Sometimes there’s nothing there but a stack of old t-shirts and a broken washer and 45 glass vases with the leaves of old flower arrangements still stuck to the sides.

And sometimes?

There’s this.

The yard sale lottery jackpot.

My favorite yard sale find ever.

This hutch.

When I first found the hutch at a yard sale over 25 years ago, it looked nothing like this.

I don’t have a before picture.

I wish I did because it would make you love it even more.

I discovered it in the very back of someone’s garage that was hosting a yard sale. The hutch wasn’t for sale. They were using it for display, and it was covered with tools and buckets and nails and old cans emblazoned with pictures of tomatoes. It was dark and stained and broken and weary and just trying to hold its head up and represent with its produce labels.

But I knew.

I looked at its cheekbones and saw a supermodel.

I dragged it home and sanded it off and painted it blue with ivy vines and pronounced it beautiful.

I moved it from our first house to our next house and painted it white.

I drove it across the country to Kentucky and, at first, I painted it a darker gray than this—SW Anonymous.

Then I moved it into the kitchen and repainted it this gray.

People always ask me what color gray it is.

The color doesn’t have a name.

It’s all the colors of the projects that went before.  I

I painted it one day with five different colors of paint from the workshop.

A little SW Mindful Gray and a little SW Repose Gray and a little SW Rice Grain and a few other friends.

I didn’t overthink it.

I just painted a little of this and a little of that. I’d walk away and let a coat dry and then come back with a new color.

Until finally I arrived at this.

It just seemed right that the hutch have its very own unique paint color—as incredible and wonderful and amazing as it is.

I’m so happy I was yard saling that day.

I’m so happy I turned at that sign.

And I’m so happy I found a hutch…

… that had me from the very first tomato label.

PS: Did you see these cute tags that I tied on top of the pumpkins?

They are SO CUTE.

I tied them everywhere all over the house (including on pumpkins).

You can ssee them here.

The same set of tags also comes in Christmas tags, too.

And they would look so cute in these frames, too.

disclosure: affiliate links are used in this post.

The post My Favorite Yard Sale Find (Ever in the History of Ever) appeared first on Thistlewood Farm.