Number Fifty-Three: Road Tripping (& Furniture Buying) in Rhode Island

Morning friends!

A couple of weeks ago we spent the day traveling through Rhode Island hunting down furniture for my painting business (and, of course, a couple little pieces for ourselves).

Typically, when I think of Rhode Island, I think of Newport or the beach, but they have some pretty amazing antique/junk/consignment shops further up in the state that we absolutely fell in love with. We have definite plans to travel there again (seriously it is just about 1.5 hours from Western Massachusetts so totally doable) to revisit our favorites and check out some more along the way.

Now, truth be told, I had no intentions of even posting about this. I know. Crazy. I'm always trying to finish things here at home or complete and stage a new furniture piece to share with you and I just never end up posting. My boyfriend and I were talking about blogging the other day and he truly thought I should be sharing more about just everyday and all these cool adventures we go on. I couldn't agree more. So in the future. I actually plan to take more than like two pictures and really show you these amazing places we find.

We started our trip in Pawtucket at the Rhode Island Antiques Mall. I love this place. Seriously. There is so much to look at. And so much I personally wanted!

Source

Next up....we headed into Providence and checked out Nostalgia. This place had a nice mix of furniture, decorative pieces and vintage clothing. I ended up buying two things. A table, which I have already refinished in General Finishes Lamp Black (below) and a vintage Mickey Mouse for my youngest who collects old Disney memorabilia. The prices were extremely reasonable for being in the middle of a city.

We stayed in Providence to hit up an indoor flea market that had gotten good reviews online. Now, this is why you cannot always trust reviews. The website showed furniture. What I saw was hooker shoes, incense and butt lifting jeans. Giant fail. Moving on...

We headed to Johnston, Rhode Island, just a few minutes away, to check out The Find on 6. LOVED this place! We found a chair (to keep, see below...still considering painting it with black chalk paint), but there was a ton, (honestly, if I had brought more money and already had my new house, ton more) I wanted to bring back.

Our last (planned) stop of the day was Stillwater Antiques Mall. This is another one of those places where you could spend forever looking. And the staff was extremely helpful and sweet. The day were went they were also filming their TV show! I shared this pic on my facebook page while we were visiting. That dresser and table came home with us (the table we are keeping and I can't wait to share it with you more...it's gorgeous)!

So, that rounded out our planned day. However, on the way home we decided to hit the back roads. While Darrell drove, I made a list of future places we want to check out (both in Rhode Island and Connecticut). Anyway, there was one adorable little town we couldn't resist and since the stores we open for a few more minutes we headed on in. There are three stores all right next to each other, but the one that had our hearts was Brown & Hopkins Country Store. We completely fell in love with this patriotic wreath...

So, that was our trip. It was a wicked awesome day, despite the fact that it snowed almost the entire time. I'm kind of getting the feeling that spring might not actually happen this year. Have you ever traveled to Rhode Island for furniture or antique shopping? If so, what's your favorite place?