Category Archives: thrifted

Color Therapy.

Posted in DIY, house, thrifted by

So this weekend I managed to fix this frame and paint it a very bright glossy red.  My father-in-law cut a piece of glass for the frame and it was very easy to transform the frame into something stunning.  It is amazing what a coat of bright paint can do to an old frame or even and old piece of  furniture.  I love everything about the photograph and the frame.  Now I just need to decide where I am going to hang it.  Click here to see what the frame looked like before I painted it.
 

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Flea Market Finds.

Posted in family, house, thrifted by

Recently, on a perfect Fall day, we spent the day thrifting at the Golden Nugget Flea Market in Lambertville New Jersey.  It was sunny and warm and Kiran’s first real thrifting expedition  (not counting the countless trips when he was a baby in the stroller where he had been blissfully oblivious to the treasures around him).  This time however, he enjoyed touching everything much to the dismay of the vendors.  While Kiran didn’t find anything to buy I found tons of stuff but I limited myself to only a couple of things.   

I found this fabulous vintage wood and plaster frame for $7:

The frame  is not in great shape and the plaster is crumbling in places.  I need to super glue the plaster back,   cleaning it thoroughly and paint it a bright glossy red.  Scott took that picture of me and Kiran in the Summer.  I love the roughness of the concrete and the chain link fence against the ornate details of the frame.

 I also  found this amazing painting (it is not a print) for $15:

We left the flea market around noon and went to a picnic area by the lake for lunch.  I can’t wait to go back to this flea market.  There were lots of vendors and lots of great items at good prices.

Vintage Teak Lamp.

Posted in house, Kiran's Room, thrifted by

I bought this lamp, a couple of months ago, at an outdoor flea market in New Jersey.  It is a teak lamp in working condition, on a marble and wood base.  It is beautiful and a total steal at $15 for the two lamps.  While one lamp was in great working condition, the other one needs to be rewired.

The lamps came with their original shades but they were ripped and dirty.  I would eventually like to re-cover the original wire shade skeletons but as a temporary fix I have been looking for an inexpensive black shade.  I went to Ikea last week and I almost fell over with excitement when I saw the black shade which was the perfect size for the lamp.


The Ekas shade cost $13.  It works perfectly with the lamp and it looks great in Kiran’s room.

The Living Room (update).

Posted in Books, bookshelves, house, living room, thrifted by

This is our living room.  I’ve been meaning to post pictures of the living room for a while now but I never got around to it.  This is mainly because the living room is really hard to photograph.  It is generally filled with light but all the pictures facing the windows generally come out either too dark or too light.  Well finally this snowy day I found the right time to take some pictures. Click here and here for some earlier pictures.

The couch is from Crate and Barrel and it was our first new piece of living room furniture.  The chrome rocker on the right of this picture is a Milo Baughman chair that we got for free while we students.  At the time we just thought that it was a fabulous chair without any knowledge of its pedigree.  The coffee table is from a flea market in New Jersey and it was manufactured by Lane. I think we paid $45 for the coffee table.  The chest on the left is also by Lane and it is made out of Cedar.  The rug is an eighty year old Persian rug that I bought on eBay.

Thrift store bottles, old thrift store lamp, puppets from Indonesia and Lane Cedar chest from the 50s.


Milo Baughman chair (possibly)

We found this chair at a thrift store in Philly.  While it looks like a Milo Baughman chair there aren’t any markings on the chair.  I love this chair. It was love at first sight.  The chrome and wool chair in the dining room, to the left of this picture is part of a pair that I bought on eBay.  Yes I have a thing for chairs!  We bought the butterfly leather chair on my first trip to Sri Lanka with Scott.  The rose brass lamp was a total score at $30 dollars at a local thrift store.  I was so excited to find it that Scott had to talk to the person at the store because he was sure that I would pay more for it than what they were asking.  The white lamp we bought recently on the side of the street when we were coming home late one evening.  I think we paid $60 for it but I had been wanting a task lamp in white for a while so it felt like a good deal.

The “library”
We found this mantle at another thrift store but it wasn’t thrifty at all.  We have always had a mantle in the old apartments that we’d lived in Philly and we really wanted one for this house.  The mantle houses some of our books.  This was supposed to be a temporary storage place for our books until we built bookshelves but we ended up really liking the books in the mantle. 

View of Mantle from the vestibule door
A lot of the furniture in the living room is from thrift stores. We also have end tables (not shown) with dove tail detailing that match the coffee table, that we found at a Goodwill store in New Jersey (ten years before we bought the coffee table).  I love old furniture.  Mainly because it is built really well but also because I rarely see new furniture that I like (that I can afford). Every piece of furniture in this room we’ve both been immediately drawn to. Also most of the furniture has been with us for so long that is intimately woven into our lives. 

Saturday spent thrifting.

Posted in house, thrifted by

We went to a “thrift” store way out in West Philly today.  While I didn’t see too many things that I liked I found a few not so thrifty things, such as this desk.  I didn’t enjoy sitting at my old desk.  I loved that it was small and had clean lines but it needed lots of work.  The drawers had to be fixed, it was a little unsteady, also it needed to be sanded and repainted.  I like that this desk, while having the same dimensions as the other desk, takes up a lot more visual space.  This room is small and this side of the room needed something substantial.  I think that sometimes in a small room you have to go large so that things don’t look too cluttered. Click here  and here to see more pictures of my room.

 I love the juxtaposition of the ornate desk next to the yellow industrial clamp lamp (eBay) and red metal filing cabinet (Ikea).

The desk is solid wood and extremely heavy. It is in excellent condition. 

Since we are talking about the desk I might as well mention the chair…I upholstered this chair (which we got with the dining table) in this fabric from Ikea.  I love black and white fabrics and I’ve accumulated a small collection. 

This is the old desk.  For now I am moving it to the basement but in the future when I have some free time I will sand it and refinish it.  It will either go into Kiran’s room or in the office room as a table for my sewing machine (not yet purchased).

Here are some pictures of the yellow porcelain  cups that we got (they were very thrifty at $5 for eight of them):