One of the best things about furnishing the Dream House with secondhand goods is coming across things like this cabinet. We were browsing around an antique mall in a nearby town and came across the old wood cabinet with glass door. The little tag on it said something simple like homemade cabinet. How charming, right?
One of my first posts here on the blog was about our search for an American-made sofa for the Dream House. We’re trying to decorate the house with mostly secondhand goods, but we decided to splurge on a brand new sofa (and mattresses, too). After toying with spending way more than our budget would allow, I stumbled upon a sofa in a local furniture store one weekend day. The sofa was not only in our price range (under budget even!), it was made in the United States. Sold!
We hosted a few guests at the Dream House over the holidays and there’s nothing like house guests to light a fire under my decorating ass! No matter where we’ve moved over the years, the bedroom has always been one of the first rooms I’ve put together. I reason that after a long day of unpacking, we’ll want a nice, comfortable place to retire at the end of the day. With the impending arrival of guests a few days after Christmas, starting with the bedrooms seemed especially important.
I had already bought a full sized sleigh bed at a thrift store before we even closed on the house, which is why it’s included in the “before” photo above. So the next big thing to work around was the color. Goodbye, mauve and navy blue walls!
American System Built Home Vase
$999 from ebay seller Nicole 7376
As I mentioned in one of my first posts, we’re attempting to outfit the Dream House in secondhand goods. We’re doing this, in part, because we’re on a very tight budget, but also because that’s how we generally decorate our homes. Still, there are the occasional shiny, new items that catch our eye. Often they’re out of our budget and yet sometimes we can make it happen.
I once heard that you first have to envision something before you can make it happen. Perhaps by collecting all of the things we want and posting them on the WISH LIST page, we’ll be letting the universe know to send them our way. If they happen to be secondhand, all the better. If we can figure out a way to DIY them, that would be the best yet.
Go to the WISH LIST.
— J. Blandings
With the hundreds and hundreds of projects that need to be done at the Dream House – not to mention the dozens that have been started but not completed – it makes absolutely no sense that I took time out of my day to decorate the mantel. And yet that’s exactly what I did on Christmas day. Hey, all work and no play make Mr. Blandings very sad!
