24 inch Girls Mountain Bike Restored

This post is more about the photography than the restoration. Despite using a smartphone to take the images, I was rather pleased with the outcome. Though I will touch on what was done to restore the bicycle briefly.

The bicycle was left outside at a business and had been there for days. Over the course of a week or so if had been asked if I wanted it, because the managers know I fix and restore things. If not it was going to be tossed in the dumpster. I turned it down a few times but then today, knowing it was the last day before heading to a landfill I decided, What the heck, let me fix it up and sell it cheap for some kid to enjoy. Put a smile on some kids face will be worth the trouble.

You can see the condition I received it in above after I inflated the tires. It wasn't in super bad shape. Tires all flat, handlebar was out of the yoke and had been ridden that way apparently. Seat all twisted around. Everything out of wack. And of course having been left out in the rain it started to surface rust.

So it was simply a matter of putting it all back together. Oil, lube, and tune it up. Inflate the tires which luckily where good Then polish it out. Okay done deal. Posted on CL for $35.

But in taking the images which as mentioned I took with my smartphone, I noticed once I looked at them. They're not half bad. At least on my smartphone they do, for all I know on something larger than a 5.5 inch screen they look like shit..(?)

The garage door had just been painted a day or so ago and proved the perfect shade of blue to make for really nice backdrop for the bike.

I didn't see the images till after I brought the bike back inside and started editing them for the CL listing. I wished I had taken more time to plan the shots once I saw them. And may take a point and shoot, the only digital camera I have, and go shoot some more pics to see if I can do better.

At any rate... I thought I'd share the pics I did take. Very little editing and adjustments done. Late afternoon sun.

If I had gone wider, giving as much as I could to the background, and with the lines of the garage door it reminds me of some famous pic I saw years ago... a Ritz style shot. Big background, small or smaller subject.

The rest being close ups, I just like how they turned out.

And yes, I played around with a couple animated gif ideas.. eh, I don't know. Maybe I'll post one later, maybe not. If you see one, you know I did. If not... well, then I didn't.

Anyway, enjoy...

Update:

As mentioned, I listed this bicycle on CL locally for $35 and within a couple days it sold.

Though you're probably hoping to hear  that this bicycle was purchased by some parent that was stretching their dollars to buy this for their daughter as a gift at this price... And I honestly was hoping for such a customer. But, I honestly don't think that's the case.

More than likely, it was purchased by a reseller. I could be wrong, but I can usually tell the resellers from end users. I've sold other items at what I term "gift prices" I've refurbished or brought back to like new condition hoping that someone that would really appreciate it, that really needed it would come along and buy it. But a reseller shows up instead.

I'm not knocking the reseller. And sure, a sale is a sale, so who do you care who buys it as long as you sell it, some might say.

To that I'd have to say I do care because I put work into the item. It's part incentive as I'm working on a project such as this bicycle to think to myself, "This is going to make some little girl or teenage girl from a  financially challenged family happy so it's worth doing the work it needs."

So I do the work and I price it with that premise in mind. And my bubble gets popped when the person buying it tells me this story of who they're buying it for, then pulls out a thousand or two in cash when they go to pay for it. As was the case on this bicycle and many other items I've refurbished. Which tells me, chances are high the person buying it is a reseller.

Resellers like to flash a lot of cash. Either to show off, or to get you to drop the price. It's a trick, you see the cash, your greed or need for money sets in, and if they offer you less you'll take it depending on how desperate you are. It's a psychological trick that depending on your mind set, works.

It doesn't work on me because someone flashing cash actually has the opposite effect on me. I'm not impressed, never have been when someone does this nor am I desperate. In fact, when someone does this it in any situation it tends to give me a distasteful impression. I don't do it even when I able and I don't like it when someone else does it. In a nut shell I consider flashing cash uncouth and unbecoming.

And in doing so, it popped this bubble, or fantasy expectation in doing the work and listing it on CL for this price in the first place. And kinda let me know the story he told me was probably bullshit. Maybe not, but more than likely.

When I put the work into something like this, it would just be nice to see the joy in some kids face. The money pays part of the expense, but the smile, the smile makes it worth doing. Knowing that the end reason for doing this in the first place, I succeeded at. Not just the sale of the item.

In the end, yes, more than likely some kid will end up with with the bicycle, but not at the price I was selling it for.

And yes, I'm happy it sold. I don't know, it's hard to explain, but it's just not the same. Not as fulfilling as it could've been.

On the positive, it's one less thing in the workshop taking up space. Which I really need to get some of these completed projects out of here. I need the elbow room for something else! Something I'm working on that'll be posted about in the near future.

Till next time,
Stay creative, stay Happy!
Cheers...