Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Stroller, Carseat and Base for $15!

I have a confession... remember the navy stroller that I recovered and raved about?  That stroller was supposed to be for my sister but a carseat wouldn't clip onto it.  Well it also turned out that the stroller was a piece of crap.  I didn't mean to lie, I thought it was great but the afternoon after I blogged about it I took Catie for a walk in it.  The seat was super long so Catie couldn't lean back comfortably, her neck would crick.  To fix that problem I made a cute pillow that worked really well but it also had a broken piece.  Remember how I talked about the handle that moved back and forth?  One of the pieces that held it in place when pulled forward was broken but with a trip to Home Depot, $5, a drill and some screws Brad and I fixed that problem too.  Two down, one to go.



Sadly the last problem could not be fixed... the bearing on one half of the wheel was not good so the whole stroller pulled to the right.  The wheel and all it's parts were attached by rivets so there was nothing we could do about that problem.  I feel a little bad about trying to sell it but wanted to recover some of my costs.

**Update - a little WD-40 fixed that problem right up (Mom's a genious), it's now in great shape and has a new happy owner!**

After going through that whole process Jenn still needed a stroller.  She needed a carseat too so I looked up Kijiji and found a carseat (with base), stroller combo for $60.  I asked if she'd take $45 and she said yes.  She sent me pictures and it looked pretty rough but since I was going to re-cover it I didn't care.  I made arrangements to go look at the set but before we could meet she contacted me to say that the stroller was no longer available because her cat had kittens in it! (Gross)

I asked how much for just the carseat and she dropped the price to $15 which I thought was not too shabby and figured I'd take the gross stroller anyway if she'd sell it to me for $5.  As stroller, carseat combo for $20 is not to bad and I can get rid of all the gross stroller parts.

I went to see it and the stroller wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, the Bratz saucer chair was worse, I offered her $5 and she told me to just take it.  Score!  (For any safety cautious out there, the carseat is not expired and hasn't been in any accidents.)  I learned from the last stroller so I pushed it a bunch and it rolled really well.

It will be a while before any re-covering happens but I thought I'd give you the before so you can wait in anticipation for the after.

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