If I had told myself 10 years ago that I would be buying THRIFTED clothes/shoes/books/household items on a REGULAR basis when I was in my (upper) 20’s… I would have flipped a lid! USED? Eww!!
That’s for folks who:
- Cannot afford new
- Have no sense of taste
- Are hippies ;)
Come on! Why would I buy USED? Great question… and I now say “why not?!”
I have had more fun searching out ‘lightly used’ items for a fantastic price than I have ever had after paying full price for a brand new original price item.
Something about knowing it’s ‘one of a kind’. I won’t run into someone at a wedding wearing the same dress. I won’t visit a friend’s apartment to discover they have the same mirror in their bathroom or same piece of artwork on their wall. And what a great sense of satisfaction when showing off my new item!
If I shared with you all of my amazing finds this blog post would be so long you’d never read it, so today I will just show you my most current discovery and thus latest project!
I have been fighting with a trouble wall in our living room for quite some time. It sits adjacent to a wall with a giant photo collage. And it sits opposite of a clementine orange accent wall. I needed something just the right size and just the right color.
I was really hoping to find a piece that had a nice frame to finish it off as well.
While visiting my favorite thrift store a few weeks ago I did a stroll by the mirrors and artwork. I was hoping that I might be able to find something the right size for my space so I could re-finish it my own style.
Matthew cringed when he saw what I came home with! This bad boy measures 32”x50” (great size!) and has a beautiful frame with a linen matting. I hung it on the wall to ensure it was a good fit for my space.
Over the next week and a half while I started thinking about what I wanted to do with it I had a lot of funny comments from friends ranging from: “Wow… is that new?” to “Interesting,… that’s not really what I would picture as your style!”… basically all hints at why in the world did I buy it this thing and hang it on my wall??
Well I decided that what I needed in it’s place was some abstracty black, white and grey birch tree trunks. I thought it would look fun and modern with a nice simple design. I set out to work. I popped the picture out of the frame so that I could change the gaudy gold look to a nice clean black to look more our style.
I started by painting a coat of white for a primer
Then I did a nice background grey to set the scene
Then added a few white ‘tree trunks’
Added some black details
And popped her in my freshly painted black frame
VOILA! It’s a finished piece. We love it!
…. Or do we? We sat on it for a few days and it’s not that we don’t like it…. It’s just that we want to love it!
Ok… so back to the drawing board… I think the problem was we like COLOR! And that side of the room is already lacking in color with the black and white photos, the plain couch, etc…
I got the primer out and painted over the birch trees:
Then while poking around online I discovered this fabulous retro Dunkin Donuts logo.
It has just the right color for our room. Matthew is OBSESSED with DD. And to top it all off I actually “owed” him a piece of DD artwork after I hung up this bad boy in our kitchen:
So… I sketched it out and started painting:
And HERE is our finished piece!
Sure it took about a day and a half of painting all together, but here’s how the break down looks for the money we actually spent on it:
Old painting: $24.95
Primer: already had in basement
Paint: already had in basement
TOTAL: $24.95
For some inspiration from others click below:
