Natalie Wood

Hello Darlings,
   We wanted to formally introduce our newest sofa piece in our collection, Natalie Wood.  Like many Hollywood stars, she has the perfect figure, with curves in all the right places! She stands at 3'7'', a width of 2'8'', and her length measuring 5'7''. She has a dark brown, mahogany wood frame and is draped with moss colored green fabric with a back rest that is covered with over fifty buttons.

Even though we drove over 400 miles to get her back to our showroom, we were blessed because we did not even have to change anything about it, and only paid $400 (cheaper than any sofa so far!). We were skimming the sofas on Craigslist, (pretty much where we find all our pieces) and happened to find this one up for sale in San Antonio, Texas. We gassed up and made our way towards SPURS Nation, excited to pick up our new addition.

When we got to the seller's house, and saw the sofa in person, we instantly knew this piece was meant for our collection. We love something with good history and this couch had it. The lady who was selling it ( probably in her late 30's) said it belonged to her grandmother, and acquired it after she passed away. She said she remembers it being in her grandma's spare room, covered in plastic, being preserved, for what we think, for us! We promised her it would be in good hands and packed it up and made our way home.

Photo by: Ivan Ramirez Photography

Of course, then came the fun part, finding her name. We scrolled through old Hollywood female actress names and tried to see which one matched our sofa. Since she had a "woods-y" feel to her because of her colors we thought the West Side Story star's name would be fitting.....And just like that, a star was born (haha ok, kind of cliche).

xoxo,
It's Vintage Darling

What's in a Name

Hello Darlings,
So, if you have read any of our previous posts you may be wondering why we name our furniture pieces, like, "hello who does that?" Well our reason was two fold, one because it was practical for inventory purposes and helped when we started getting more pieces, second because, well it's just fun to use all those baby names you secretly pick out but know they would never work with your last name.

So, how do we pick ours? Well it just depends on the piece and how it is shaped and the color of the fabric. For the most part, many of our pieces are given female names, but we have a few men in our collection as well. The first piece we actually named was our white chaise lounge, Betty White. We were kind of basic when we chose her name. Since the chaise had an old Hollywood look we wanted to give it a celebrity name. Since the fabric was white we just kind of thought of "Betty White"...Yeah not too much thought went into that one, but the more we added pieces the more fun we started having with naming them.

Robin chair

Lucille Ball chair

Sometimes we can't decide on the same name, so that's when we turn to our social media. We will take a poll and ask friends what name they think the piece embodies. That's how our love seat, Marilyn Monroe was born!

Marilyn Monroe love seat

We don't know how many pieces we will end up with in the future,and maybe we will run out of names, but for now we do find joy in picking out that special name for each piece.

XOXO,
It's Vintage Darling

Betty White

Hello Darlings,
       We wanted to introduce to you our #1 rented out piece, Miss Betty White. She stands at 3 feet and 11 inches tall and 6 feet long,  has porcelain skin with golden hair that silhouettes her body..Or in furniture terms, she has white fabric with a gold wooden frame (but that way kind of sounds boring!) okay, okay, we will try to stop sounding clever with our words, we will just get to point of this post, her before and after process.

 After we had our two main pieces, our Cinderella sofa and vintage truck, we started looking for others to add to our collection. We came across this ad in craigslist, and the seller was asking $450 for the chaise.

We offered $400 and they accepted. The seller, who was in her late 40s or early 50s said it belonged to her grandma, and had been in the family for a long time, so we knew we needed to do something fabulous with it. We could not agree on a color so we went to our facebook and Instagram and asked for other's opinions. With the feedback we received, we decided on a white colored fabric. This time we called an upholster, one with good reviews, and asked him how much material we would be needing and how much the piece would be to change the fabric (he quoted us $275 for labor). 

We went down to Hancock Fabrics and picked out a micro suede material (8 yds @ $7.99/yd), since it was going to be a light color we needed a material that would not stain easily. We also went with a white Gimp (border of fabric) which only cost us about ($4).

Before it went off the upholster we were advised to paint the wood part, so we turned to Roslyn's mom, who is an expert in painting wood pieces. She used a gold metallic color by Rust-Oleum ($3.99/can)

and highlighted the piece's accents and crevices with a dark glaze, also by Rust-Oleum, in the color Java Brown.($30/can. very little was used in this process)

Then off to the upholster she went....


Over $700 spent on her total work done and we had our final piece, Betty White!

One final note: Before we rented her out we scotch guarded the fabric and has really helped to minimize stains.

XOXO,

It's Vintage Darling

The Full Story

Photo by:Marisol Izaguirre

Hello Darlings! So, we kind of gave you a little summary of how we got started with our vintage rentals, but we thought we would give you the full story of how it all started.....

Well, when we first fixed up Cinderella (our first piece) our initial direction was to re-sell it. We went online and checked what other vintage sofa prices were ranging, on Ebay we saw them starting at around $800 and even went up to $2000 . Since we paid a total of $740 with all the repairs we were thinking we would get our money back and then sum..Nope! We posted on our local craigslist and priced it at $900 **crickets** then went down to $800, still no one called. Even though we loved the sofa and could have kept it for ourselves, there was no way we were going to keep it around with all our indoor dogs around it (two out of our three dogs are Basset hound mix so they shed terribly). 

Any-who, we started thinking of what to do with this blue vintage sofa....

We had some friends who did photography and thought maybe it would be a cool prop for their clients to sit on while taking pictures. We reached out to two of them and got their feedback, giving us a thumbs up. We then decided we would do a little market research (tried to put some of those marketing college classes to use). We pitched our idea to a wedding planner as well as other photographers who we didn't know in our area. Our little idea was well received, so it made us really consider renting it out, as well as finding more vintage pieces. Then we thought, "are there any companies out there who do this?" We found tons of companies that did the same thing we were wanting to do, but none in our area, so we decided to go further with our idea. We also had a 1947 black Chevrolet, fully restored, so that was also added to our start-up collection. 

Next, we decided on our name and went to register it at the court house and set-up our Facebook and Instagram pages. 

We contacted our photographer friend Marisol Izaguirre, and asked if she would be willing to take some professional photos of our two pieces so we could start promoting them. Thankfully she agreed and we offered a trade-out of our pieces in return for the photos. 

Photo by Marisol Izaguirre

Finally after three months of waiting, we got our first call........

xoxo,

It's Vintage Darling 

Frequently Asked Questions

Hello Darlings! Just in case you had any questions in regards to how our rentals work, read on to find out some we have answered.

Surprise Mother's Day photo shoot featuring our chair, side table and books *booze not included by us*

How do the rentals work?

• All our pieces are rented out by the occasion, and depending on the piece will determine the price. A small delivery fee will be charged and will be based on the distance to the desired location. 

How long do I have my rental for?

• Your rental can start as early as 7 a.m. and end as late as 12 a.m  (midnight). Anything past midnight will have an additional charge   *depending on location will depend on extension fee*

Is there an option to pick up?

• Yes, you are more than welcome to pick up your piece(s), with the exception of a few listed below.  For large pieces that travel by truck, you are required to properly secure them during travel, and you will be responsible to provide your own tie-downs/rope. 

  * only pieces not available for self-pick up is our white/gold chaise lounge (Betty White)                          due to her sensitive fabric, pallet wall, and 1947 Chevy pick-up truck. *

When is payment due?

• As of now we do not require a deposit to hold your day, unless stated otherwise. Payment is due upon delivery. *For weddings we do require full payment one week before your date. This is especially to help the bride/groom avoid worrying about any payments on their big day!

What if it rains, and my event is outside?

• We are more than happy to re-schedule your piece(s) as long as they are available on the next date of your choice. Of course if you decide to move the location to an indoor venue, then you can keep your original rental date.

Can I come see the pieces in person?

• Yes, come on by! Please be sure to contact us because we show the pieces by appointment only. 

If you have any other questions/concerns please contact/share them with us.

XOXO,

It's Vintage Darling
https://www.facebook.com/Its-Vintage-Darling-

Our First Piece

                     Photo by: http://marisolizaguirre.com/

                                                 
Hello Darlings! We would like to introduce our first piece that started our rental journey. Her name is Cinderella (yes, most of our pieces have a name) and she is 7 feet long, has a dark wood frame, a soft robin's egg blue micro-suede fabric, and over 50 buttons (a.k.a tufts). To be clear, she was not born with these fine looks, but had to have some cosmetic surgery to get here.

Here is the before shot

                                                             

       We found her on craigslist and paid $40, which we thought was an amazing deal!  After she was officially ours we hit up pinterest to see how we were going to fix her up. We found a soft teal sofa that looked similar to this one so we decided to hunt for that color.

Next was to find the fabric. We went to a store that is downtown and found a color that resembled the one we had seen online. We were not sure on the amount of fabric to get so we just guesstimated (mistake #1). We got 11 yards at $8.99/yd.

Now to find someone to re-cover the fabric.... We had reupholstered some chairs in the past and considered tackling the project ourselves, but did not want to risk it. We found a place on craigslist that did upholstery so we called and they gave us a bid of $500 (mistake #2). We just figured everyone would have a similar price so we went with them.

And then the waiting game .... We were told it would take about two weeks to get done, but finally after about a month we got her back, with a final total of $600 (trust us, we were fuming when the total was $100 more than the quoted price). But, we didn't argue, just paid and brought her home  (mistake #3).

Have you done the math yet? Yup, $740, probably just could have bought a brand new one or one ready to go from eBay!

So to help you in the future, if you are considering doing something similar to this, we recommend three things:
1: To avoid over spending, call a professional upholster or research the exact amount of fabric you will need
2: Do not be impatient: call around to several different places that do that type of work (if there are several in your area)
3: Don't let them take advantage of you! We should have pushed a little harder to have them charge us closer to the quoted price. Of course we understand it is hard labor, but a nice heads up would have been nice.

Of course in the end, we are still in love with our first piece. We encourage you to find old furniture, whether it be from a garage sale, goodwill, or your grandma's house and give it a make-over, of course, now you know some ways to save a little money on your next project.

Cinderella chillen at a wedding

xoxo,
It's Vintage Darling

Introduction

         Hi! My name is Roslyn, I'm the one in the cream colored dress posing in front of a fake camera...  Oh, and the girl holding the film-less box, that's Jaclyn, my cousin/bff/business partner. We are two college students who  started a rental company in our parent's basement. Just kidding (about the basement)! We are from South Texas so people do not typically have basements here, so....we started the company in our parents formal living room. What kind of rentals you ask?  We specialize in vintage rentals, you know the stuff you would normally find in your grandma's house covered in plastic! As of now our collection consists mostly of  sofas, chairs, tables, suitcases, phones, other small accessories and a 1947 black Chevy truck. A lot of the pieces we find are from garage sales, estate sales, and even sometimes, if we get lucky, from an alley behind old neighborhoods. Most of the time we will revive the pieces, whether it be from painting the wood (cheapest), fixing the legs, or changing the fabric(expensive!). We try to take the D.I.Y. route as much as possible, but sometimes have to leave it to the professionals to get the job done. We are blessed we get to work with a lot of photographers who rent out our pieces as props for their photos, as well as with brides, who use the pieces to add decor to their wedding day. 
We love what we do and hope we get to have this little company for a long time, of course if it doesn't work out, we will have some awesome furniture to fight over!

xoxo,
It's Vintage Darling
-Roslyn