Decorating, the perpetual secondhand store shopper

Find of the year, antique radio, maybe the find of the Century, for us anyway

This picture is in our dining room.  To the left is a primitive birdhouse we found at the Salvation Army store, the glass washboard we found at Goodwill, our antique style glass shaded lamp, our vintage radio and on the right, the cabinet Steve made for me to house some of my collections.

List of prices we paid:  This list proves you can decorate cheaply if you look hard enough.  1) primitive birdhouse: $2.00 at Salvation Army Store.  2) Glass washboard: $3.00 at the Goodwill Store (asking price in many antique shops is $35.  3) Antique style glass shaded lamp: $2.00 at local secondhand store.  4) This one is the find of the year for us..antique radio: a whopping $20.00 at our local secondhand shop (marked down from $35 because no one wanted to buy it (Fools).  In the local antique shops: radio prices range from $125 to $200, whether the radio works or not. I did tell you that decorating with taste, cheaply, is not impossible.  We have a shoestring budget, so we frequent the Goodwill Stores, Salvation Army Store, and garage and yard sales and secondhand shops in our area.  It takes some looking to find bargains, but we love it, the thrill of the hunt is what makes it so much fun.  

The ever growing collection

I love Coca Cola items, both old and new.  As my collection of Coke items, my advertising tins and anything else that catches my eye while shopping for vintage-style items, grows, so does my need for places to display them.  Many of my tins are displayed on top of the kitchen cabinets, but when those spaces got filled up, Steve decided to construct display cabinets for me in the primitive style I love.  He knew I needed the display cases or risk being on an episode of Hoarders.  Bless him.  The Coke glasses and matching pitcher cost me $.49 per glass and the pitcher cost $2.00.  

   Some of my extensive Coke collection housed in the homemade cabinet.

A mixture of advertising tins, Coke collection and vintage vinegar cruets. 

I love vinegar cruets, the old ones, because as a kid, I grew up with vinegar cruets on the kitchen table.  My Dad loved vinegar on fresh cucumbers, baked beans and many other foods, so Mom always had vinegar handy in cruets.  Yeah, it's the nostalgia of it all for me. 

Food choppers, cruets, advertising tins and advertising trays, displayed in our country kitchen.

Berries above the French doors leading from the living room into the dining room.  I love the country look of the berry swag.

Primitive looking rocking horse on the wall in our living room.  Love the country colors.

Dining room with my display of nesting boxes, cool trunk and paper ma~che teddy bears. 

Now again, the list of prices for the collection.  1) Teddy bears, $3.00 for the pair.  2) Rocking horse, $3.00.  3) Nesting boxes, I did splurge and paid $6.00 for the set.  But in the country magazines I have, they are $50 from country craft stores.  Oh, BTW, I also buy my country magazines at Goodwill for 99 cents each.  Outdated?  They are, a bit, but cost $6 to $8 brand new.  I can live with outdated. 4) Vintage cruets, $.99 each.  5) Cool trunk, $6 at Salvation Army Store. 6) Country bench that nesting boxes rest on, $2 at a yard sale, Steve painted it a nice country color for me.  7) Berry swag above doorway, $2 at the Goodwill Store in the Christmas display pile.  8) Advertising tins from $.49 to $.99 each.  Advertising trays, $1.00 each. 

All of the items we use to decorate our home with, usually cost pennies, the radio, yes we paid $20 for it but we'll splurge a bit for good quality vintage items.  This blog is designed to show you that yes, you can decorate your home with beautiful items for a fraction of what you might have thought.  We also love flea markets (don't be afraid to haggle on prices) for many items too.  I hope you enjoyed this blog and Happy Hunting. 

Decorating, looking expensive and still being frugal

      Just looks like a pile of scrap wood

We search our local Craigslist all the time looking for free anything.  Low cost is great, but free is a bigger bargain.  We happened to find a person who is remodeling his house and advertised a small trailer full of wood he pulled from his house.  He advertised it as free and said if no one wanted it, it was going to the junk.  We saved all this nice wood from going to the local landfill.  Steve, my husband, loves to make furniture and I love the furniture.  For me, old wood is wonderful because I'm partial to rustic furniture.  So from these piles, comes furniture for our house, furniture he makes me for a song.

You might say: "I can't make furniture, never done it before."  Steve has never made much furniture either, before now.  Since I adore rustic furniture, the older wood works perfectly for making my rustic cabinets and recently, two dry sinks.  All painted with the flat, country colors.  

                       A spice rack made from scrap wood

I used to keep my spices in one cupboard.  Every time I cooked, I had to drag all the spices out, place them on the counter just to find a few I needed for that recipe.  We searched stores and couldn't find a decent sized spice rack to hold all our bottles. (Spice racks have fallen out of favor?)  We love to cook at home, from scratch.  This way we control what goes into our food, like no added salt or sugars, so spices are essential to make the food taste good.  Steve made this rack from scrap wood and we happened to have some stencils we bought a long time ago.  He painted the rack in a lovely country color, added the word 'Spices' to it and used a stencil on each side.  I love it, now I can see the bottles without having to drag them from the cupboard and put them all back.  

                      Trash can holder from scrap wood

We also have two cats, who, BTW, like to get into the trash can in the kitchen, if possible.  I needed a trash can with a lid.  I looked at out local second hand shops and the cute ones they offered cost $20 and up, mostly and up.  Steve measured our trash can and put together an attractive box for the trash can in our kitchen.  Now I have a nice looking place for our trash.  We bought an advertisement at Goodwill for 99 cents, that says: " Pride Seed Co."  For a long time I didn't know what I might do with that advertisement.  Steve glued it to the top of the trash can holder and now the holder looks like an old fashioned seed crate.  Very clever.  I've gotten many compliments on this box.

Just because you want nice things for your home doesn't mean you have to spend a fortune.  Look around, re purpose, paint, spend less and you can imagine a ladder, scrap wood or an old piece of furniture painted to become whatever your imagination says it can be. 

Decorating on a shoestring because we're poor

     Old windows we inherited from the house

Decorating the house, at first, seemed daunting.  We started out by deciding what theme we would run with and carry it through to each room.  You can choose modern, mid-century, Victorian or anything that you like.  We're partial to the country look with a spattering of primitive.  There were three old windows in the garage when we moved in, so we decided to start using them throughout the house.  The one above, is displayed just inside our front door on the wall.  We originally had a hall tree there but decided it just didn't go with the decor we wanted.  We ended up selling it at a yard sale.  We painted the frame a country blue then added the metal word 'LOVE' that we purchased at out local Goodwill Store.  We went searching specifically for decorations at Goodwill that we could use on each window.  We paid 99 cents for the metal letters, and another 99 cents for the small shelf we attached to the bottom front.  I already had a bag of glass owls I'd purchased for 99 cents, so decided it was a perfect size to display my collection.  The antique glass beaded swag was purchased for $3.50 at one of our local thrift shops, but there were two swags in the pack, so the $3.50 was a nice bargain and makes a wonderful topper for this project.  With the paint, the shelf and swag, the entire project probably cost us about five or six dollars.  One of the area antique shops is selling these, not as pretty as this one, for about $35 to $45 so we ended up with an expensive looking piece at a fraction of the cost.  We made a bathroom theme and a bedroom theme out of the other two.  The other two probably cost $2.00 to $3.00 because the decorations were much cheaper than the glass swag.  All decorations were bought at Goodwill for 99 cents or less, some cost as little as 49 cents each.

                      Glass swag up close

                  Bedroom themed window frame.

The bedroom frame is adorned with handmade, calico tulips. 
I bought an entire bouquet of them for about 49 cents.  I guess no one wanted them so they were marked down.  The two plaques were 99 cents each. 

                              The 99 cent plaques

                 The bathroom themed frame.  The metal holder
                  for washcloths, was really an old plate holder 
                  in its former life.
                  

These were the first of our decorating projects.  We were fortunate enough to inherit old windows but you can still purchase them cheaply at garage sales and flea markets. 

 Sometimes people will give them away if they happen to be remodeling.  We hope you enjoyed this project and we hope you will try it sometime.  Thanks for reading and always feel free to leave tips, pictures and comments.  You can find these shared on Facebook under Roberta Davie-Weathers. I look forward to hearing from you.