How to decorate my home on the cheap?
After my son went away to college, like many empty-nesters I decided to simplify my life. I sold everything I owned, except for family photos, objects of sentiment and my personal belongings. I moved in with a close friend, never realizing that two years later I’d marry a man with equally sparse living quarters.
What do you do with an almost empty apartment and lean pockets? You bless the heart of Rachel Ashwell, who coined the term Shabby Chic, turning garage sales and flea markets vogue, and shows like Trading Spaces for making decorating on the fly a hip thing to do. I thank my Grandma for teaching me that you CAN make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Though we did have between us a bed, two televisions, two computers with desks and a night stand, over a period of six months and for less than $300, Shane and I built a new nest together, one in which each room has a theme. That wasn’t our original plan. Call it serendipity, call it fate, but definitely call it fun.
Our kitchen resembles a Mexican cantina. This was decided by the tiles on the bar and the two bar stools we ran across with ragged seats, plus the bolt of forest green, royal blue and white striped material sitting on a table next to them. I recovered the seats with this beautiful material. We bought matching wooden picture frames at a discount store and I found online pictures of male and female flamenco dancers, then glued the material on the backing, and voila! With the remainder of the material I made curtains. We found some very inexpensive colored vases–again at a discount store–which I filled with dried flowers. There is a cart in the kitchen the microwave sits on. In its previous life it was raw wood and lived in a garage as a table for tools. I cleaned it up, refinished it, and painted it forest green. On the wall is one of Shane’s finds, a clock. It is a little Mexican man in a sombrero. In his arms is a timer, which certainly has come in handy.
Our bedroom is a trip back in time. Inspired by my grandma’s jewelry box, which is at least fifty years old, this was the natural choice. She had it sitting on her vanity for as long as I can remember. It is light brown wood with leaves and flowers carved on the top and sides. There is a mirror on the inside of the lid. The glass is smoky, and the image you see feels as if you have stepped back into the past. The first find on our old fashioned quest was an archaic manual typewriter. It sits on the dresser Shane found on the street in front of our apartment, waiting with the trash. It is gorgeous. It is real, not particle board, heavy wood. It had one thing wrong with it, a broken drawer, which my husband easily fixed. On the bedroom wall hang matching pictures of two-seater bicycles. One of my favorite things is the Victorian doll that stands next to the typewriter. She is made of papier-mâché and has on a long, dusky pink dress with puffy sleeves. She sports a straw bonnet, and is holding a basket of dried flowers. What started out as a cheap antique picture frame ended up a gold filigree mirror that now takes up half one wall. I did all of the handiwork, then had the mirror professionally installed. We picked up a few old-fashioned tins and antique books, discovering a Norton Anthology of Poetry; a true treasure, and placed the books in a nice but inexpensive bookcase. The curtains in the bedroom we found at a discount store. They are gauzy silk, pale yellow with appliquéd yellow daises and green leaves, very sheer.
Our living room is oriental. This started with two large pictures of Japanese geishas we were delighted to discover at a flea market. I can’t describe how beautiful these pictures are. They are very old, so old that the glass is not tempered. We had to have a couch, but we ended up buying one we really didn’t like. It is white with blue stripes. So we shampooed it, went to Target and bought a nice comforter with an oriental design and draped it over the couch. We found a cool oriental vase at a garage sale, brown ceramic with Japanese symbols in beige. Hobby Lobby had a sale on pottery, and we bought a big oriental pot, then went to Home Depot and got a fichus tree to put in it. We are still working on this room.
It feels good, being surrounded by memories of my grandma, and past lives I create in my writer’s mind for the people who owned our treasures before us. Then there are the memories of how much fun we had. When friends come over and compliment the beauty of our home, I almost feel as if we cheated, we enjoyed ourselves so much and spent so little. But mostly I feel like a proud, bohemian queen bee.
