When the thrift store stars align for a perfect deal…

Our daughter, who’s 18 years old, has spent close to a decade sleeping in this loft bed:

My mom and dad bought this cool bed for her birthday one year, and I remember my mom (ever the wise grandma!) saying “Someday, you’ll get tired of climbing up there to sleep.”

“No, I won’t,” our daughter said.

Well, less than a week after her high school graduation, the inevitable happened — our princess has decided she no longer wishes to ascend these steps each night to sleep in this lofty tower.

As we prepared to dismantle the loft bed and return her mattress to a standard bed frame and height, she realized that she might also like a headboard too. Knowing that she plans to move out at some point in the next couple of years, we didn’t want to spend too much on it. She likes reading in bed, so I considered making an upholstered headboard for her. I also figured it might be worth looking at a thrift store for something affordable that we could refinish or re-cover.

This afternoon, I stopped into Savers thrift store in Crystal Lake, and I was very surprised to find three identical blue upholstered twin headboards! I asked an employee, “What’s the story with these?” She said the headboards were brand-new, and they were dropped off by a local furniture store recently. As they didn’t have bed frames with them, the store priced them “low enough to move them out.”

I happily bought one and brought it home. I couldn’t have made an upholstered headboard for what I paid for this:

What a deal. It even matches her room!