Last weekend we drove two hours north to Arlington, Virginia so Clara could spend time with her cousin Elsa. While there, my cousin Travis and I ended up matching in daddy-plaid, shorts, flip-flops, and nearly identical Kettler bikes (both his, scored in a great Craigslist deal).
Elsa’s mom, Cat—Sherry’s longtime friend whom we introduced to my cousin back in 2007—took us to a charming shop in Old Town Alexandria called Red Barn Mercantile. The store was full of lovely vintage finds, but our eyes were drawn to a bowl of old printing press letters. For six dollars we picked up a “C” so Clara could join our small collection of salvaged letters and numbers (we already had 7, J, S, L, O, V, E). The first three were bought at a New York flea market shortly after we started dating on 7/7/05, which explains our soft spot for the number seven. We also looked for an uppercase “B” for “Burger,” but the shop only had lowercase letters, which look like backwards “d”s when reversed. The search for an uppercase B continues.
That $6 letter was a fun find, but the real jackpot from that trip was something else entirely. For six dollars total we walked away with six solid wood cabinets. Yes—six cabinets for six dollars. Not each—$6 for all of them.
We discovered them at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Alexandria. Apparently a hotel had donated a truckload of nightstands, and the ReStore had already sold most of them at $15 apiece. When someone returned a batch of leftovers, the ReStore quickly marked those at $1 each to clear them out. We were stunned. The nightstands were substantial and featured details like slide-out shelves inside—far from the flimsy dollar-store type.
Because of a past bedbug experience in New York, I’m very vigilant about secondhand furniture. I inspected every inch of the cabinets—both at the store and again at home—and found no sign of insects or droppings. Bed bugs are visible to the naked eye and tend to prefer soft, porous surfaces like mattresses and upholstered furniture, so hard, glossy cabinets are much less hospitable. If you’re ever unsure about a used piece, leave it in a garage or sunroom for a day or two and check it again before bringing it inside.
We managed to fit two cabinets into our Altima along with our travel gear: a pack-and-play, a dog crate, a baby in a big car seat, travel bags, and two people. One cabinet went in the trunk and the other rode shotgun while Sherry sat in back with the baby and the folded crate. The ReStore held the remaining four until my dad, who happened to be in the area for a meeting, picked them up in his Honda Pilot. Usually we don’t have an easy way to transport bulky items when we’re far from home, so this felt like a lucky break.
Including tax, the total came to $6.30—still an incredible bargain for six well-built cabinets. Our plan is to use them for the built-in office workstation we’ve been planning. The idea is to arrange two cabinets on the left, leave an open 30″ space for a chair, put two in the middle with another 30″ opening, and finish with two cabinets on the right. With that layout each seating area will have the ideal 30″ clearance—our chairs are 24″ wide, so that leaves a comfortable six inches of wiggle room compared to our current cramped homemade desk.
The cabinets will need some prep before they’re installed. We’ll prime and paint the exteriors glossy white. The interiors will remain their natural wood tone, which helps hide scuffs and looks classic—similar to the wood interiors on the KraftMaid drawers we loved in our first kitchen. One issue is height: the cabinets are about 26″ tall, while our chairs are 27″. We want a final desk height of roughly 30″, so we’re planning to build simple risers. These could be boxes painted to match the cabinets so everything looks seamless; we’re still debating whether to make those risers open shelves or just front them with solid faces.
We’re relieved the cabinets aren’t the standard 35″ base-cabinet size, which would have been much harder to adapt. These are deep enough to function as a desk without a lot of extra framing, and they’ll save us both time and materials. After months of searching for affordable secondhand options for our office, this find felt like the cabinet gods smiled on us. We did spend money on a different office solution—file storage—when we couldn’t find used pieces that fit, so it wasn’t all thrift-store wins. You win some, you lose some.
We’ll share the painting and installation process as we go, along with alternative sources we considered for anyone else hunting for budget-friendly cabinetry. In the meantime, what’s the best under-ten-dollar purchase you’ve ever made? A lucky thrift find, a clothing steal, or a chance meeting that changed your life? We’d love to hear your stories.