Episode 3: The ReStore Treasure Hunt (Caldwell County vs. Charlotte)

Welcome back to another incredible episode of Groovin’ Together! It is Episode 3, and your hosts Shaun and Dave are back with a brand-new adventure that takes us straight into the heart of the North Carolina antique and thrift circuit. If you absolutely love a good treasure hunt, you are going to want to turn the volume all the way up for this one. We are stepping out of the studio and bringing you along on our latest weekend road trip, and spoiler alert: the weekend finds were absolutely legendary.

This week, we are diving deep into the ultimate weekend showdown: The Great Habitat ReStore Rumble! We hit the road and visited not one, but two amazing locations—the Caldwell County Habitat ReStore and the Wendover ReStore over in the Habitat Charlotte Region. You know we are always on the hunt to grow our vinyl collection and reach that massive 1,000-record goal, and we can safely say that these spots did not disappoint!

In this episode, we are breaking down everything you need to know about our latest haul and systematically comparing the two locations. Which store had the absolute best hidden gems waiting in their record bins? We talk all about the joy of digging through the crates and the sheer thrill of scoring the perfect jazz, R&B, hip hop, and classical albums to add to our home library. But it was not just about the music on this trip! We are giving you the full, unfiltered rundown on how Caldwell and Wendover truly stack up against each other when it comes to their furniture selection, electronics, and, of course, the pricing. Whether you are a hardcore antiquing pro or just someone who loves finding a unique weekend bargain, we have all the insider tips on where you should spend your time and money.

Join us as we laugh about the unexpected things we found in the aisles, debate which location truly took the crown for the best overall thrifting experience, and share our personal strategies for navigating these massive stores like total pros. Dave and I had an absolute blast wandering around, and we are so excited to bring that same upbeat, treasure-hunting energy right to your speakers. We also chat a bit about how these weekend excursions keep us inspired and keep the grooves fresh back at home.

So, grab your favorite drink, get comfortable, and get ready to talk thrifting strategy. We want to hear from you, too! Do you have a favorite local spot on the circuit? What is your best thrift store find of all time?

Don't forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an adventure, and if you are loving the show, please leave us a five-star review! It helps our Groovin' Together family grow. Until next week, keep the music loud, keep searching for those hidden gems, and most importantly, keep groovin' together!

We have pulled the songs for you and created a playlist of all the songs mentioned. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAtDhNqC3U7M

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to Grooving Together, where we are dropping the needle on our new adventure in life. I'm Sean. And I'm David. And we are here to bring you love and marriage and teaking, what we do in our grown-up kid era and travel. We are here, we are here. So you guys, just a quick reminder that we are now available wherever you stream your podcast. So please, please look up Groovin Together and add us to your favorite where we're dropping our episodes every Monday after 10 p.m. We are also available on Instagram as well as Facebook, and it's all called Groovin' Together, and we would love for you to join our Groovy family. This week we are talking about the treasure hunts that we found at the restore, and we did two of them to compare which one might be your thing. So we went out to the country, and we went out to the city, and we found some great things and some great treasures, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Oh yeah, yeah, there definitely was some adventures and treasures to be found at both the city and the country. And you know, just being together on the road early in the morning, it's always a wonderful thing to start the day off with a quick meal. So we did stop and we we got a meal somewhere from a local place in Charlotte. And you know, you want to give local business money, and I'm not gonna mention the name, but you want to give local businesses money. And so we tried this spot that had, you know, your breakfast fare, pancakes, waffles, chicken and waffles, all the stuff. And when we first went in, my wife kind of made a face when we walked in because the smell, it wasn't what she would be accustomed to. You know, I I I thought it was pretty uh pretty interesting smell, like onions and potatoes, maybe, which lends itself more to dinner.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

But yeah, well, you know, you guys, so here's a little thing about me, and Dave already knows I'm looking at sanitation score first. So if you are 95 and above, I will definitely give you a try. And this particular place was 98, so we tried it.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, the place had good reviews online and it had a high sanitation score, but we went ahead and we made an order, and I got pancakes and chicken, you know. I asked the waitress what was good, and she said, Well, I don't eat certain things, but I do eat, you know, the pancakes or the chicken. So that's what I got. And yeah, I mean, it was interesting because typically with the pancake, you know, you want to be fluffy, you put your syrup on, it's gonna be good. But these pancakes already had a high moisture content even before I put the syrup on top of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Uh let's just say it wasn't good. Let's let's just skip down to the to the bottom part of it and it just wasn't good. And, you know, we try it. That's one rule that we have in our marriage. You know, if we we think something might be interest interesting, we'll try it once. And if both of us don't like it, we'll we don't typically try it again. So uh this is definitely not a Sean and Dave endorsement, two thumbs up for Poppy. So we'll we'll skip it, but we definitely don't want to give the name out, and we'll just leave it be and just know that Chick-fil-A was the place for me. So that's where we ended up going. And you know, it's nothing wrong with tried and truce, tried and trues. So from there we went on our first adventure, and just know that this was over a couple of weeks, you guys. So from there we went on our first adventure, and we ended up in Calwell County Habitat for Humanity Restore. And just so you guys know, just a little bit of history, because you know I'm always about the nerdiness. Habitat for Humanity started their restore in 1992, and their first store was in Austin, Texas, and now they have over a thousand locations. And what I love about the restore, not to knock any of the antique malls or antique stores or anything, but places like the restore is like it's giving that item a second breath, a second wind of life. So definitely love doing that. Plus, it's for a good cause, right, guys?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the restore helps the people who have housing instability. So as you purchase items from the restore, it's going back to help you know the community and help people with housing instability. So it was a win-win when you get items from there.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So yeah, we definitely love to do our little part and also get our little treasures as well. So Caldwell County, Mr. Stafford, what did you think?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah, Caldwell County, you know, I think it was a good drive up there. You know, they're up there near the beginning of what seems to be the Blue Ridge Mountains. And so it was a nice scenic ride up there. And I thought going in, it looked kind of small on the outside, but once you get into it, you know, and you see you have to have a little bit of space in there, it has a little bit of space, and just took a when I looked across the entire spacing, I saw that they had a little bit of an electronic section with three or four pieces. They had a lot of nice looking furniture, dressers, armoirs, things like that. And then it had some other areas with some more household type goods. So I thought, you know, just looking at it real quick, because I'm big into electronics and the records, obviously, as well as uh video games, and I didn't really see a whole lot of that, but but I was interested to see, you know, what type of furniture could be out there.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, and they had some really great prices. I think they had a uh table, six chairs, and a table that had a leaf that you could remove from the table and was 150 bucks, and it was in fantastic shape. They had a chiffre roll that almost, not a chiffre roll, a curio, curio cabinet. Get you get your C-words together, Sean Tavia. So they had a curio that almost went on with us. It was $50, and it was a little corner curio, and I absolutely loved it and adored it, but it just didn't have the right wood color. I guess I could have stained it, I guess, but no, I'm not a staining girl. I could be, but not really. But let's get down to the brass knuckles. What did we find? What did we buy? Did we walk out with anything?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Well, for me, I was able to go over to the electronics section, and uh when I walked over there, there was another guy over there, and he was looking at some of the stereo equipment, and there was a receiver, pioneer receiver, there was a Sony CD player five disc, and there was, I believe there was one other piece over there. I can't remember what it was, but yeah, anyway, I kind of been looking for a CD player to go to the to the music room system because it, you know, before we only had the vinyl, so I wanted to add a CD player, so I waited till the guy kind of picked up the item he was looking at, which was a monitor. He looked at a computer monitor, and then he turned away. And when he turned away, I walked over there and I picked up the 5D CD player. And as soon as I did that, he turned back around and started fiddling again with the pioneer receiver as if to say, Hey, I'm still looking at it. And I was like, Yeah, you snooze, you lose, buddy.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

He gave you one of those looks like it reminded me off of the Cosby episode when they when Rudy was trying to learn how to tap and they had the sand man on there, and he told Cosby, challenge. So he definitely had that look like, Well, if you're gonna buy this, I'm gonna buy this and this. But you know, those little stories that we make up in our head with everybody. He probably wasn't even paying us no attention, but he looked like it was.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yeah, but you know, at the end of the day, I got it. I put a CD in there because they did actually have some CDs as well as some vinyls in there. So I actually tested it out inside the building and made sure it worked. And it worked like a charm. At least it was playing the CD. I don't know if the audio was gonna work till I got home, but yeah, that was awesome. And I also saw over there in the corner a Transformer movie, big on Transformers, and the Transformer movie was just sitting there, I believe it was a dollar. So I was like, for a dollar, I might not ever watch it in Blu-ray, but hey, I'll just put it to my Transformer display case, and that's exactly uh what I picked up as well. And finally, I picked up a John Madden 2025. No, it wasn't 2025, it was Madden 25 with very standard on the front. Xbox games. I was like, okay, yeah, I'll just add this to my game collection. But those are the three things I picked up. How about you?

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I leave the electronics and everything to the hubby. As he stated, the violin uh violins, where are my words today? The vinyl were over there, but not anything that was of interest to mine, might be an interest of yours, had a lot of Christmas vinyls, which I have a buku amount of, and a lot of old country, maybe hee holidays type country music, which you know I can listen to it, I can get down with that, but wasn't really interested in that. That wasn't what I was adding on to my thing. However, when I looked all the way over to the left, they had some beautiful reprints uh in in the store, and I love me a good picture, the hang up on the wall, and one of them really caught my eye, and I was really familiar with that picture before. It's called The Dating Tonight Romantic Walk in the Rain by Leonard Afmove. Don't don't come for me, internet. Don't come for me. I know I probably butchered that name, but it was absolutely gorgeous, and it put me in the mind of our Paris trip that we took last year for our 30th meat versity. Yes, we are that cheesy, we are that ooey gooey lovey lovey dubby that we celebrate not only our wedding anniversary, but our meatavers gets just as much attention. And I love that Paris trip. It was beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, it definitely was a great trip to celebrate the media meataversary in style, being able to be in Paris, be by those, all those great historical landmarks, you know, you see on TV and you see in the internet, Eiffel Tower, and you know, all those different what what would they call that place with the what they had the what they had Josephine Baker, what I forget what they call that place. Oh, you're talking about the Path Pantheon, the Pantheon, all those places over there. It's great to see that in real life and even just to see the different buildings, right? And do all those churches, church tours, it was really amazing. See Notre Dame in person, all the same. But yeah, we had a great time. Uh you know, the French food is is different, so I will say that, but they did have Chipotle over there. So I did have Chipotle over in France one time. So I was forgetting.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Chipotle will travel. That's that's that's it with that. Get you good old Chipotle. So anyway, the painting looks just like the the tree line boulevard. I know that I'm being redundant because boulevard in French means tree line roads. So, yes, of course, they will have tree trees on the roads. So it's absolutely gorgeous. The painting, the colors on the painting was beautiful, and it was only eight dollars. Now, if you get a hold of that actual print, that print can go anywhere from $13,000 to $150,000. Nope. Scratch that, take out an extra zero, thirteen hundred to fifteen thousand. My fault. And then going down a couple more aisles down the way, we see all of the China sets that they have set up, and this particular place had China that was set to go. So, what up what do I mean by that? They grouped a lot of these things together, so you would get like a 64-piece for a hundred dollars or something along those lines. Now they did have some that were individually priced, but the prices were fantastic. So I saw these appetizer plates that look like the plates that we got in the cafe that was right across from Notre Dame, where we where we sat and ate, and the colors on those plates matched that painting, and it just put me in a lovely dubby mood and reminiscing of Paris, and the plates were 75 cents a piece, so I got all eight of them, and hopefully, one day I'll create a brunch themed for Petty and break out those plates, but they were absolutely fantastic, and then I also ended up getting additional plates, but they were turn of millennial, so this was the 1999 signature plates for turn of the century, and they were absolutely gorgeous. They had 10 of those, and they were a dollar a piece, so I ended up buying those as well, and those were my little treasures that I had, but the prices were fantastic, and the staff was super duper friendly, very helpful. I kept seeing people going in and out and getting help to carry things out, and they just love to pull up a chair and have a conversation with you, and you know, ask the whys behind why you got it and everything else, and it wasn't like polite talk. I think they genuinely wanted to know and they enjoyed their customers, they had repeat customers, and I like that type of environment. I like it so for that, I definitely they have my vote to come again.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Yeah, I mean, I think it was a good spot overall. Like if you need some furniture, things for your bedroom, things for your dining room, God would give them a look because it's not particle press board, just a nice quality, many times antique type furniture. So, really, really good quality.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Excellent, excellent, excellent. So, we're gonna get into the famous time machine and go a week later, we go to another restore. And this restore was in the city. This was off of Windover Road in Charlotte, North Carolina. And buddy, they were much bigger, much bigger.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, I mean, this one was definitely four to five times the size of Caldwell County, but it makes sense because you know, in Charlotte it has multiple restores, but it makes sense. Charlotte's so huge, so for them to have a restore of this size, definitely, definitely was on brand, I would say, for Charlotte.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

For sure. And also uh the size of this definitely lended to a lot of great little nuggets that we found as we were walking around the store. But one thing that I can say that I noticed in that store versus the Caldwell store was it was not a lot of grouping. So a lot of the china was individually priced, it wasn't put together in this nice little bundle pack. And some of the furniture came in a little bit higher than what we would have seen in the other restore. But we have to remember at the end of the day, the end goal is still the same. All the proceeds go to helping those in need of housing, providing them housing. So we definitely don't want to get over squabble over the pricing because the end goal is the same. But I will tell you, we did find some treasures.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Oh, yes, we definitely did. Yeah, I mean, over the last few months, we had talked about you know getting some larger, uh, one larger piece of uh furniture in the in this home and something that we had in the past that somehow or another, I'm not exactly sure what happened to it, but somehow or another in the old house it got damaged. Uh, you want to tell them what it is? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So we were looking for a grandfather clock. Like Dave said, we had one in our older home when the girls were little, little. I'm not putting the blame on them, but that clock no longer works. And for a couple of years, I kind of went cuckoo crazy. Sometimes I get on a subject and I fixate on it, and I just look up all the history on it so that when I go out to the store, I know what it is that I'm looking for. So we walked around that restore and we found three grandfather clocks, and my eyes could not believe what was on the floor. The they had a berwick grandfather clock on the floor. And for those that know, they know, but for those that don't know, I'll tell you, Berwick is really a great quality grandfather clock because it comes from the company of Howard Miller Clock Company. Now, you know, guys, if you get a hold of that Howard Miller clock, it's gonna cost a pretty penny. The Berwicks make it a little bit more feasible to get because a lot of people don't know that that's coming from that same company, so but even in its own right, those clocks can go from $1,300, $1,400. So to see that clock on the floor and it be $95, I there was no there was no decision to be made. That was coming home with us, and so it did. And when we went to go purchase it, put it into the car, and then we noticed that it also this store also had a bookstore.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Yeah, so I I you know when we pulled up to the location, I saw something that said books on the outside, and I was like, oh, I is this part of the store, and it actually is. So it's a book and a coffee shop. And when we took our time after we loaded the clock in and we walked over there, we cut a couple of corners in the store, and lo and behold, was a bunch of vinyls.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yes, we definitely have vinyls, but quick side note for the coffee again. Shantavia is looking at the sanitation rate. They were good, they were above 95. So I got some coffee, and it was actually pretty decent. They did a really good job with that. But getting back over to the vinyl, because you kids love to hear that stuff. My bad. We found eight records that we ended up getting, and those records ended up being like a dollar a piece. So that's a really great source to start. If you're thinking about starting your vinyl collection to start over at that store, they had some really great prices, but two of the records really touched our hearts.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Yeah, so I was able to find Norman Connor's invitation, not invitation, you are my starship. Yeah, I was thinking about invitation, which we could talk about that a little bit later on. But I found You Are My Starship.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

And then we also found we also found Mahalia Jackson. And that Mahalia Jackson has a really close spot in my heart for that. My grandmother and I, when I would help her roll pennies for a Sunday service for church, almost always you can bet that we were listening to Mahalia Jackson, and you know, she definitely had a huge influence in my life as far as with music and gospel music, and also one of our favorite movies that we would love to watch together is Imitation of Life. The second one, the remake to the first movie, which is a movie adaptation to the book Imitations of Life. That's a whole nother episode. Anyway, Mahalia Jackson, for you guys that don't know, she was a big, uh, big part in the civil rights movement, always helping out and doing concerts and things of that nature, and she was really close with Martin Luther King, and she is credited in giving encouraging him to say his I have a dream speech, which for those history buffs this on this channel, that was not the speech that he was going to make. He was he actually had a different speech that he was going to make, and he ended up doing that because she said, Tell him about the dream, Martin. And that's when he went into his I Have a Dream speech. Beautiful soul, beautiful voice, and it just warmed my heart that that we were able to find that.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Oh, yeah, that that was great. It was definitely a great find to see in there. It was in really good condition, so that really uh that was a great find for us. And the find I had, like I said, was Norman Connor's You Are My Starship. And For those not familiar with Norman Connors, you might be more familiar with some of the songs that he had and some influence over. And Norman Connors, I compare him to be like Quincy, a lesser-known Quincy Jones. He's a drummer. He actually played as a teenager with Don Coltrane. He sat in for one of his one of his sessions. And, you know, Norman Connors has had so many artists that has come across uh throughout the years, and he's been the guy to really launch their careers. For example, Michael Henderson, he he launched that guy's career with You Are My Starship. You know, I'm sure you've all heard that song before. But not only that, uh Phyllis Hyman, he did a lot of work with uh Phyllis Hyman and as well as Angela Bokfield. So, you know, there's so many artists that can look back to the influence that that he's had over them and and the humongous impact that he's made. But not only did Norman Connors is a great producer, but he's also been one of the most sampled artists in hip hop history as well. If you ever watched the movie Brown Sugar, yeah, I love that movie. That's one of our movies right there. Yeah, the last the last song, the last scene where he's where they're doing that brown sugar, that was sampling the song Invitation, and that's Norman Connor's song. So have you heard uh brown sugar on the on the movie Brown Sugar? If you heard that before, then you've heard a little bit of Norman Connors. I really uh recommend you go to check him out, and I'm sure you're gonna find that you're here know a lot of the songs that Norman Connor has out there.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

And Phyllis Hyman, I mean, really, the beautiful that a voice that got gone too too early, I mean, just amazing. She did one of the songs that I love that that they did together was Bet You by Golly Wild, which was a remake. If I'm giving you a little hint into what our next week's topic's gonna be. So love that. So if you haven't had a chance to listen to that, I would encourage you to do so, Phyllis Hyman. Bet you by Golly Wow. It is her voice is amazing. Her voice was amazing. But that's all we got for you on those two weeks. Just trying to give you guys a different look on different way of looking on how to antique. It doesn't always have to be in the antique mall. You can find these antiques in different ways and different places. So hope that gave you some ideas and some encouragement to continue to antique. And we want to hear from you guys. Let us know where you've been antiquing it and how you've been doing. And let us know: did you hear the songs? Are you a Norman Connors fan? Are you a Mahali Jackson fan? What are some of your favorite songs? We'd love to hear for you guys to talk back to us. We have a section for comments, so please feel free to do so. And also, really quick before we sign off for the day, giving you an update on our record count. Boom bur boom. We have 547 records, and we have 500, well, different artists, and 571 records in total right now. So the the total is climbing. And we want to thank you guys for being here. Hope you enjoyed your coffee. I definitely enjoyed mine while I was talking to you, and next time, keep moving.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

All right, until the next time.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Bye, guys.