Etsy and The Non Existent Shipping Calculator

Ohhh Etsy...why do you have a non existent shipping calculator? It makes everything so EXTREMELY difficult to determine shipping costs ESPECIALLY since the post office is constantly changing their rates and shipping restrictions.

I can remember when I first started on Ebay and it cost no more than $5.45 to send anything anywhere. International was cheap, Canada and Mexico were considered to be part of the US, there were fewer zones, you could send MASSIVE boxes with little extra cost, anything under 16 ounces you could send with stamps, yadda, yadda, yadda. Fast forward to today and every, single, thing is taken into account with shipping and it is costing an arm and a leg. Furthermore, prices vary WIDELY depending on the zone, which used to only fluctuate $0.20 or so now can command a $20 difference.

Take the picture at the top for example. That thin dress only weighs 12 ounces inside an envelope. Because of this I can mail it First Class Mail for under $5.00 within the Continental US. If it weighed 13.1 ounces or more, it must then go Priority Mail or Parcel Select which can be between $7-$8. This is if it fits into a pre-made and distributed Priority Box...BUT if it is going to Alaska or Hawaii it would cost $12-$13 because they no longer send "Parcel" packages there.

If that same item (the dress above), weighing 12 ounces, had to go into a box 1 inch larger than 12X12X12 it would cost $33.00 to send it to California! WHAAAAAAAAAAT! Yes, I am serious.

I got into a pickle on Etsy selling hats. The hats weigh virtually nothing, but I had to make my own boxes so that they would not be bent or curled. Not knowing that the Post Office changed their box rule to 12X12X12 - it used to be a 106 inch total of all sides and it would ship for the normal price, I only charged someone $10 to ship a hat. If the hat had gone within my own zone, it would have cost the normal rate (less than $10). The one going to California cost almost $37.00! I was livid! I had to send the hat Parcel Select to avoid losing money on the sale, and now I have to charge triple the cost to send the hats. How is this fair? 

Because of stuff like this, it is beyond my comprehension as to why Etsy does not have a shipping calculator like Ebay has. Below are some examples of recent costs to send to certain zip codes: PLEASE LOOK at Chicago - Chicago is in the SAME shipping zone as me and as you can see, the differences are DRAMATIC.

California 90210
12 ounces - $6.45 Priority. 1 pound 8 ounces - $10.25 Priority. 12X12X13 Box 12 Ounces - $41.95.

New York 10019
12 ounces - $6.00 Priority. 1 pound 8 ounces - $8.75 Priority. 12X12X13 Box 12 Ounces - $34.65.


Alaska/Hawaii 99546/96727
12 ounces - $6.95 Priority. 1 pound 8 ounces - $11.25 Priority. 12X12X13 Box 12 Ounces - $48.15.


Florida/Texas 33040/79821
12 ounces - $6.20 Priority. 1 pound 8 ounces - $9.50 Priority. 12X12X13 Box 12 Ounces - $38.80.


CHICAGO 60018
12 ounces - $5.60 Priority. 1 pound 8 ounces - $5.80 Priority. 12X12X13 Box 12 Ounces - $6.60.

Isn't this ridiculous!?

Mary Alice Hadley Pottery

A few weeks ago I was out "junking" and I found a bag of these adorable drawer pulls. They were heavy and hand done so I knew they had to be expensive. I scooped them up not knowing anything about the maker M.A. Hadley. Well, it turns out that M.A. Hadley is referring to Mary Alice Hadley of Louisville, Kentucky. I did know that Louisville had and still is a major pottery hub since there are amazing deposits of clay in Southern Indiana. 

Mary Alice, born in 1911, became a nationally recognized artist at a VERY young age for her whimsical designs. In 1939 she began putting her designs onto pottery. Having come from a well established potting family, she whipped up plates and bowls for herself and for friends who loved her designs. In 1940, she and her husband opened the Hadley Pottery Company in Louisville and has been extremely successful ever since. The Hadley factory is STILL in the original building in Louisville and it features some of Mary Alice's original art, murals, and pottery. Despite the fact that Mary Alice died in 1965, her designs live on given that Louisville natives bought the company in 1970 and it has since sill remained known as Hadley Pottery.

The blue gaze you see is Hadley Signature Blue, and they are the only company to use this color. 

These are also designed to be extremely durable - and you can tell because these are very thick and solid pieces. According to their site, all their pieces are microwave and dishwasher safe - and they have been made the same way for over 70 years.

Aren't these adorable?! They have the cutest country theme, and although I do not have the same style going on in my house AT ALL (Everything in my house is Mid Century Modern) I can appreciate solid, American craftsmanship and design any day! M.A. Hadley pieces are only made for limited amounts of time apparently, so once a style is gone, you really have no way of finding it again. New knobs retail on their site for $14.50 a piece, but I can say these are well worth it because they will last a lifetime I am sure. In case anyone is interested, you can visit the website here.

Parrot Tulips

EARTH DAY! Check out these amazing Parrot Tulips I have growing in my garden! 

Here is a close up!

 

I also have these funny daffodils! 

Still Working on Website

I have acquired my domain through GoDaddy but I am trying to build a site at Wix. So far, I am very pleased with the Wix system and their tools (very easy to understand), but I want to make it "perfect" of course before launching it.

Etsy and Twitter

My sales have picked up recently on Etsy so I decided to try and put more effort into my social media marketing. I have had a Facebook page for Gray Cat Vintage since 2010, but I never really used it and no one ever visited it aside from family. I guess I really did not know what I was supposed to do to generate interest in the page. Fast forward to now. Last year or the year before I got on Pinterest. I have several boards with many followers, but my most successful board is for Gardening and Outdoor Ideas. Since people were looking at my pins, I also made a board for my Ebay and Etsy sales - to which I immediately had people "following" that board. 

Why was this successful and the Facebook page was not? Since I do not post EVERYTHING I sell on Pinterest, it is not flooded with stuff. I pick the "highlights" of my listings and include those. I think that the "less is more" idea was more favorable than just linking a zillion listings to Facebook - which was what I did in the beginning and no one ever visited the page. Now, I update the Facebook page with "news" including recent listings, updates on sales, popular items, etc. and I have found a few more people following the page. 

The biggest difference however has been that my Facebook page is linked to Etsy. See, Ebay does not really allow you to do this. Yes, you can link Ebay with Facebook but it will upload things automatically and self promote Ebay on your page which is not something I really cared to do. Etsy simply provides a link from my shop page directly to Facebook. Super easy - no hassle. Because of this, I also obtained a Twitter account in case in the future I want to promote sales or special deals.

In case anyone wants to visit my:
Pinterest page is here.
Etsy is here.
Facebook is here.
Twitter is here.
Ebay is here.

Asbestos Tile and Cutback Adhesive Part 2

Ok well I was apparently too ambitious on this one. The cutback residue on the wood floors is impossible to remove without hiring someone with an industrial sander to grind it off. Since the thicknesses vary, this can and will create a totally uneven floor surface and could have sanded the floor so thin it would have caused damage. Sometimes people can steam the floor to remove the cutback, but it is laid on so thick, this option will not work for my floors. 

Furthermore, there is no transition between the kitchen and the dining room. It looks almost like they did the kitchen last and laid the wood floor separate from the rest of the house. It is the same wood and it is level, but it is totally choppy where the kitchen meets the dining room. My only option now is to have new sub floor put down and install my funky, vintage salvage yard tile over that. I am sure it will turn out just fine :)

Added note: Well, poo. LOL! When the old floor was removed and the new sub floor was laid, it actually covered more surface area than the old floor. Let me explain: The old floor ended about 2 inches from the cabinetry closest to the dining room. (None of the rooms in my house are even or even perfectly square, but I will get to that in a minute). The carpet in the dining room had to be pulled back to make enough room to lay the sub floor. My friend who did this work laid the sub floor so that it met up with the actual CORNER of the kitchen - where in reality the original floor should have ended in the first place. 

Now, back to the rooms not being even - when the house was built the only thing I can think is that the layout was either totally different from its present state, or the person who built it did not really know what they were doing. In my dining room, there is a double window - a double window that is not centered in the dining room. It actually encroaches into the kitchen making it very visually awkward. Not only is the window not center, but the wall that separates the house (in the kitchen) is not lined up with either the edge of the window OR the cabinets.

Back to the floor "oops" I made - since the sub floor now looks more proper it did make the surface area I need to cover larger. Sooooo, I do not have enough of my vintage tile. I was about 6 tiles short (you have got to be kidding me). I knew there would be no more of this tile because I bought all the pieces they had at the salvage yard. So, I went back this weekend to try and find something to salvage this whole project. I found tile that was the same thickness, but not even close to the same color - or even the same size. The tile I bought originally is 16X16 and the new tile I found is 12X12. So, now I had to come up with how I could make this work. The only thing I could think is that I could make a border around the whole kitchen in the new tile and use the old tile to fill in the middle.

This will either look totally cool and unique or completely stupid. I am SO UPSET that the pictures I took of the original floor and the demo were accidentally deleted from my camera. I will try and update this with pictures of the new sub floor and tile soon.