Hello, and welcome to another rousing round of Saturday Steals, where what you get is what you see and what you see is cheap or free!

To participate, simply:

1) Steal a steal.

2) Write a post about it on your blog, mentioning that you’re participating in Saturday Steals (you can steal the above image if you so desire), and

3) Add the link to said post to the list at the bottom of this post.

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Over the summer

[What?

Summer.

What’s that?

A glorious thing you used to know but now it’s gone and pretty likely never to return],

I got into the habit of cruising Mayberry’s regular weekend yard sales (I am a yard sale expert, you know) armed with quarters and void of all pride, scavenging the town for good steals. (Come to think of it, I was kind of like a little woodland creature back then, squirreling away good steals during the abundance of summer to last me throughout the upcoming winter.)

Anyway, one such steal was this:

A vintage, Canadian-made, solid wood side table. I bought it for $5.

It was in pretty poor shape, and undeniably very ugly, but I in my infinite wisdom saw beyond its shell and found: good bones.

The plan back in the summer was to sand it down and paint it some trendy colour and re-sell it on Craigslist.

I got so far as sanding it and priming it before school started again and that was the end of my entrepreneurial venture.

Fast forward to February. My in-laws decided to give us their forty year-old deep freezer to replace our fifty year-old deep freezer (which has been out of commission and I’m pretty sure growing mold in our garage for the last year or so), since they were getting a zero year-old one to replace their forty year-old one. The process of sorting through, cleaning out, hauling away, and playing Tetris with all of the crap cluttering our garage took up the better part of a Saturday last month and involved swear words of such violent a caliber I really shouldn’t repeat them here, but in the end my father-in-law did not die of a heart attack while moving freezers with PK, so all was well.

And we had a working freezer again.

‘Midst this process, though, I came across my old side table from the summer, primed and missing its hardware, which I had removed for said priming purposes.

After enduring some really top-rate jabs from my husband about why do we have so much junk in our garage (answer: me, it’s all my fault), I swallowed my shame and jumpstarted myself into action:

I can sell that just how it is, I thought. Market it as Primed-and-Ready-to-Paint (rather than half-finished, failed potential).

So I did. I rounded up the hardware (it’s actually pretty nifty: see above), took some pictures of it and posted it online. Within hours, I’d gotten five emails from people wanting it.

I’m not going to lie, I seriously considered taking the ad down and just keeping it for myself, because if so many people thought it was great then it was probably worth keeping, but lack of decorative prowess combined with my lack of space for the thing and also my dear love of all things coin- and cash-related (exacerbated these past months on account of this), compelled me to move forward with my plan.

I bought the table for $5 at a yard sale in July.

I sold it for $55 on Craigslist in February.

My $50 profit will pay for a whole lot of crepes à Paris in June.

And that is my steal.

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Now it’s your turn! What have you stolen lately?

Add your steal to the link list below. It will be open from now till Sunday at 11:59 p.m.

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