Updating My Household Furniture for a Profit, Part 1

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If you had visited my house once a week for the last couple months, every week you'd notice something different.

I've been on a mission -- changing furniture, adjusting decorations and getting a little crafty with it.

When I'm on a mission, there's not much that can stop me. This can be to my detriment. If my back could talk, it would say, "She's a mad woman! She keeps moving furniture and hanging pictures and adjusting and readjusting everything even through the extra pain I'm giving her!"

And it's true. One of my copy editors once told me I have "an eagle eye for details." In the area of the details of decorating (colors, balance, alignment) it's to the point I'm a bit obsessive compulsive.

Room by room, I'm updating my house while making profit. I sell the old for far more than the new, so I have no guilt about indulging in my domestic diva side.



For the first reveal, I'll start small with my "nook" AKA library AKA the awkward space.

I have a cute little 1940s cottage home, but it's weird. One of its many weird features is this almost-room that on one end opens to the front door and on the other, opens to the living room.

We've had many configurations in this space before. The most recent was a 5-foot long snake cage and stand along the long wall, a large oak bookcase along the adjoining wall and a record player and small stand in the especially awkward corner wall.

Impulsive me forgot to take a before picture, but here's a rough idea of what it looked it from Christmas time.


















First, we got rid of the aquarium stand because Pacman likes to climb, and in order to do that, he needed his home right-side up -- no stand needed. That sell was an easy $75 of total profit. We previously got the giant aquarium, stand, plus a ton of aquarium supplies FREE on CL!

(Dude left his aquarium setup in his aunt's garage for months. He spent thousands on it. Aunt got fed up and wanted the space. Dude lost out. We benefited.)

So huge. The stand is 62" W x 20" D x 24" H.

Next, I really wanted to ditch the bookcase. A deep bookcase does not hold CDs well, and this bookcase was never our style; it was a family hand-me-down. Golden oak is just not us.

So we sold the bookcase for 45.

And turned the record stand into a pet food station in the dining room.

Now when you enter our house, you see:

View from front door. Those media stands are just 9" deep at bottom!



View from living room.
View from living room, facing front door.
To do this, I spent:
  • $20 for TWO media shelves, each holding up to 1,000 CDs from CL.
  • $10 for floor lamp from CL.
  • $0 for bookshelf and record player stand. The bookshelf is from my office (and was made by uncle as a dollhouse for my grandmother, *insert awws*) and the record player stand was free on CL.
Spent: $30. Sold: $120. Profit: $90. Not bad for such a little room.
The extra space makes such a difference. And we can move the media shelves around with all the media in it, no problem. Moving that oak bookcase when it was empty was a pain-in-a-half. It feels like we finally found the right way to utilize this nook. It only took us five years.

AND I'm not quite done because after doing all of this, we received a monetary gift for our six-year wedding anniversary and purchased a new (used) stereo system with its own stereo stand and ginormous speakers. So I will be swapping that in where the record stand is once we figure out how to get it all hooked up.

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