Did you ever take furniture that someone else left out on the curb?

If you have ever lived in a military area then they (I) have dropped off and picked up some great stuff. I used to put my stuff in storage during lengthy deployments and if it didn't all shove into the storage rental then something bulky got left out for someone else to glean. I have picked up all sorts of things from curbs. I hauled away a rather large computer desk a guy said he was tired of miving. It was just veneer particle board but it was huge and had all sorts of storage. But it was about a butt ton of mass to move and he was sick of it. Some glue and a few replaced screws and I used that hulk for years before passing it on again for the same reason as the last guy. I even bought a washer and dryer set from a guy that I knew good and well used to drive around in a ratty old van picking them up from the curb and repairing them. I should admit that I find it more than a little shameful that there are those among us that find that to be low brow to reuse something or even better to clean it up and repair it. But I guess it depends just what kind of spoon you were raised with.
 
My first apartment was furnished with Dumpster-Dived vinyl backed chrome chairs lovingly reupholstered in duct tape. Kept my butt off the floor just as well as the $100 models did!
 
I'm better at not picking up so much as I used to. I try to lean more towards treasure than trash. I picked up a hinged box off the curb and didn't look in it until I got home. It was a WWII foot locker with medals, letters, souvenirs, misc issued stuff. A real time capsule.
 
Onomea said:
Yep. I once picked up a rocking chair on 112th between Broadway and Amsterdam in NYC that was missing a rung. I used a piece of broom handle and some Elmers to replace the rung, and was in business. I called it the "112rh Street Memorial Rocking Chair." I like it so much that I considered dismantling it and taking it to Tokyo when I moved here in '86, but my then wife would not agree. (So I divorced her a couple years later...)

Then there was a couch that my bro and I acquired for free from somewhere when we were living on W 14th St, might have been off the street, and which we recovered with a blanket and a staple gun. Looked pretty good, actually. But we had these two male cats, unfixed, as it were, who like to use the couch for a latrine. Got pretty rank, so we put it on the curb where it promptly dissapeared in about ten minutes.

Always wondered how whoever took the couch felt about it when he/she got it back home and into the living room and took a whiff...
Click to expand...

Must have been a great rocking chair!
 
I have been known to polish off half eaten sandwiches from a trash can, but never took furniture left at the curb.








:)
 
I picked up a bedside table that looked great after I cleaned it up and refinshed it. In the same pile were a bunch of nautical charts maybe tossed by a tug captain they covered most of the Northern Gulf Coast
Being a boater I picked them up fast!
Steve W
 
Never furniture but..

I did pick up an almost new Nordic Track Pro model and am still using some of the parts from it. People in this area intentionally put out things on the curb that are still good so others can pick.
 
In my 20s all of my hard furniture was picked up from curb-sides. I may have got an earlier poster's chair though (NW IN around 1969?) and learned my lesson about nice soft furniture and fleas.

You don't want to hear my friend's story about the *like new* mattress that he found :eek:
 
Dumpster diving is a lot of fun if you have the space to store the stuff. Last year I saw a air compressor sitting by the curb. I stopped for a look, and the owner came out to "chat". Seems that it was "broken" because it tripped circuit breakers every time he plugged it in. Works fine, especially with the correct size service.
 
Yes sir....as a single soldier in Germany we were shutting down a community and since I was PCS'ing to another community and was authorized to live off post because of my job....I did the curb side shopping spree and outfitted my apartment with a full living room of furniture...it may have not been worth photographing for a magazine but it worked out....
 
I was emptying my trash years ago, I spied a holster box inside of a dumpster.
I picked it up to see what kind it was, there was a new leather holster inside, a name brand if I remember correctly.
 
In the 1980's, while living in Dallas, I came across some tools that had been set curbside. I went up to the door and asked the old lady who answered if she was throwing them away. She said yes, that her husband had passed and she had no need for them. If I was interested, there was more stuff in the garage that she would like to get rid of. When I left, I had a pickup full: a 1945 Sears & Roebuck model 109 metal lathe, a floor-standing drill press, an oxy-acetylene rig, a bench grinder, a Sears 220v air compressor, a large Sears machinist chest on casters and an assortment of hand tools. Many of the tools were old but well maintained. Plus there were boxes of scrap metal, old bolts, nuts and an assortment of miscellaneous hardware. That machinery is sitting in my shop today and gets used quite a lot.

I felt guilty and told her that she could sell all the equipment and make some good money. I offered to pay her but she refused to take my money. She thanked me for helping her clean out her garage. I have never had a find like that before and probably never will again.
 
Last summer I was driving to work on large item trash day and spied a broken coffee table in a pile of trash. I stopped to take a closer look and found it was made of teak. Over the winter the coffee table transformed into trim for my sail boat.
 
The master of curbside/roadside picking is rburg-I'm waiting for him to chime in. Me, I'm just a piker-although I have pulled over for a spool of phone wire, a couple of gas cans, boat paddles, etc. Even got a broken igloo that blew out of someones boat that I salvaged for the hinges, handles and snaps.
 
I heard Sip sat on a curb for three days and nobody would take him!:eek:
 
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