I adore wandering through different secondhand shops and seeing all of the furniture and decorations for sale. I've always loved antique shops since I became an adult. Funny thing though, I remember, as a kid, my Mom would drag me to every household auction in town. Back then I was usually bored and I hated those old, worn looking pieces of furniture she would bring home to our house.
Back then, no one was into antiques much in those days. Those 1920 era furniture pieces could be bought for next to nothing at household auctions. My Mom never paid more than $5 for anything at auction. She bought dressers for $1, kitchen tables (big ones) for $5 and end tables and even a Hoosier cabinet for $1 to $2 each. When I grew up, someone must have decided all that stuff was antique and began jacking up the prices. I guess, as with everything we think is valuable, nostalgia had a lot to do with what people were willing to pay. Well into the 1990's I could still find nice old pieces at yard and garage sales for around $5 for wooden dressers and iron beds usually sold for $10 to $15 (complete). It wasn't until the middle to late 90's when shops decided these pieces were hard to find. But when EBay came along, we became aware most pieces were not as rare as we once thought.
Whatever the reason antiques have fallen from favor now, I'm just glad they have. In our older house, the now pretty much, cheap antiques, fit right into our decor. Does anyone really decorate their homes any more? I don't know, but we do. Since traveling has become so expensive for the most part, we enjoy being at home and we like it as pretty and as comfortable as possible.
Some of my favorite pieces of furniture are primitive that look like they could have come from Great Grandma's house or log cabin. Furniture that was made before fancy saws, mills and still have signs of hammer marks, country paint colors and crude nails. The cruder, the better for me. Those pieces are rare to find. Either because people hoard them or people threw them out long ago because they were not refined pieces. That's a shame because even though primitive, they show ingenuity and craftsmanship. Furniture made by people using no plans or blueprints, by people not schooled in making furniture. Since that furniture is hard to find, my husband has set up a nice wood shop and makes me the pieces I seek. Since, in recent years, there's been an epidemic of filling landfills with things people no longer want, we always seek wood we can recycle. Recycled wood makes the best looking primitive pieces. The following pictures are examples of the primitives I love and the type of furniture my talented husband loves to make.
This picture, above, is a smaller dry sink Steve made for our bathroom. This house has a rather small bathroom with the old iron tub and I didn't want modern junk to store our bathroom items in. In the old days people used dry sinks, so Steve made me a smaller version of one to store toiletries and such in. I have a larger one in our dining room, both made from recycled wood, both made in the primitive style I love.
I also needed more places to store my plants for winter inside the house. The plant stand is one Steve made, using old wood and covered it with a lovely Pennsylvania folk art sign I've had for several years. My plants have grown rather large so I need stands that are both decorative and sturdy.
A closeup of the stenciled flowers on the dry sink
Butterfly knobs on the doors, also recycled
Plant stand from recycled wood
Top of plant stand
