The Best Things in Life...

are FREE!!!

Back in April (yup, we still haven't made it to May yet) I glanced out the window and saw our neighbor unloading a bunch of stuff from his truck. I told Eric to go help him, so he did. Eric got to talking with the neighbor and discovered "big item pickup day." There are scheduled pickup days in Overland Park for any big items you want to get rid of; your pickup day is determined by the area you live in. Apparently, people go prowl the sidewalks with their trucks and trailers and just collect a whole bunch of stuff--some junk and some pretty good items. Our neighbor invited us to go with him because it happened to be a pickup day for the rich parts of town.

We drove and drove around looking at stuff. I watched our neighbor collect, but I refused to get anything that would only clutter the house. Finally, we passed by a dresser and I knew I wanted it! It didn't quite fit, but it was obvious that I had to have it, so the boys got rid of a random item to make room in the truck.

I forgot to get a good shot of the "before." The only thing that was wrong with the dresser is that the 2nd drawer sunk down. After further investigation we found out it was just missing a piece of wood to go across and act as a support for the drawer.

Being the fixer-uppers we are, Eric and I got to sawing wood (another thing we picked up off the sidewalk).

And we measured to make sure it fit just right. Then I stained the piece of wood (with stain we had already). It was a fairly good match.

We didn't have any carpenter's glue and I was too impatient so we nailed the piece of wood in place. The top piece of wood was the already existing one and the one below it is what we created. Not bad right?!

Here is the final product! The dresser is in great shape, and so far the drawer has held up wonderfully.

Just to get an idea on what we saved from this little project...This dresser costs $259.99 (and it has one less drawer than our dresser).

(Sorry for the tiny pic) This dresser has the same amount of drawers and costs $541.49.

So let's just say we got a great bargain and are thrilled! We literally spent $0 on the dresser just by taking advantage of events in the area and using what we already had to fix it up!