Taming The Garage

This is a picture of the garage today. And that's after selling a large, executive desk, a large, leather wingback desk chair, a portable air conditioning unit, a dining room table and 4 chairs, a large dog crate, a bicycle, and a large rug. And after editing 4 or 5 boxes from my personal (tax, etc.) files; donating 3 large boxes of clothes and 4 large boxes of sheets, towels and blankets; and tossing several bins worth of old books and magazines.*

The desk was in poor condition, due to chair gouging and just normal wear and tear. Too bad, because it was a beautiful desk, still being sold by Kimball for over $5,000 new. I asked only $245 because it needed refinishing.

I thought about refinishing it myself and selling it for more, but that's a risk. Executive desks are not in high demand. But I did invest in Restore-A-Finish, a really nice product sold through Home Depot. It adds a little stain to a polishing material that does a nice job of shining up old furniture and covering scratches. I liked it so much I used it on all the furniture in my house. The desk was bought by an event coordinator for a corporate (Budweiser) event. The staff people who picked up the desk promised me the owner knows the value of fine furniture and would be restoring and refinishing it after the event.

The leather chair was a different matter. The back panel was torn, and the leather needed some cleaning and TLC, but it looked like the repair might not cost too much. Unrestored and unrepaired, the chair might have been a hard sell at even $100. I cleaned and conditioned the chair with leather soap and conditioner. That was one thirsty chair.

The repair was a bit more than I had hoped, $225, but I was pretty sure I could get around $425 for it all nice and new-looking, based on the cost of comparable new chairs. The leather upholsterer did a really nice job of repair, and he threw in some color touch ups here and there, and replaced a few missing brass studs for no extra charge. The guy who bought the chair, for $425, was super pleased with it, he was sick of sitting in small chairs. And I got an extra $100 for my troubles.

It doesn't look it, but now I can actually move around in the garage, which means I can go through some of those old boxes and toss the junk, keep what I need, and garage sell what's left. Some of the stuff in there is already on Craigslist -- the golf case and a couple of bar stools you can see in the picture, plus three wingback chairs that would look beautiful if someone would reupholster them. The chairs take a lot of space, but I hate to just throw them away. Maybe I'll ask an upholsterer what it might cost to have them reupholstered. I just don't think I'll get the return I was able to get with the leather chair.

The goal is to whittle the garage storage down to just those items I need to take with me to SC: personal/tax files, family pictures, keepsakes, and the like. Even if I weren't moving, it's past time to tame that garage.

* I know what you're thinking: how could you sell and donate and throw away so many large items and boxes, and still have a garage that crowded? When you're just storing furniture, not trying to sell it, you can stack dining tables and chairs on top of desks, and store boxes underneath; if you're selling furniture, you have to arrange it to show, nothing can be over or underneath, and it all has to be arranged in the front of the garage. So you're actually taking more space, until everything is gone.