Sage, Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

We are both huge fans of thrift store shopping. That probably isn’t a surprise. I mean, we have a DIY blog. And, if you recall, our very first post was a dual makeover of some sad old lamps we found for $7 each at Goodwill.

But we don’t actually get go thrift shopping that often. We both work full time, so its hard to find the time for a trip, especially because a lot of the good stores in our area are a decent drive away. It’s not like we can just pop around the corner, unfortunately.

So when I mapped out a route that would allow us to hit 11 thrift/consignment shops in one day, it was NOT a hard sell to convince Sage to give up a Saturday for the trip. We thought it would be fun to share with you some of the cool stuff we found, as well as some inspiration from other bloggers for makeovers of common thrift store items.

I knew it was a good route because I had done an abbreviated version of it before, and came away with some nice finds. If you don’t mind joining me in my ~~warehouse of hoarded broken furniture~~ basement I can show you the most notable piece from my earlier trip: this cabinet. For $8, it is mostly solid wood with drawers that work and adorable little wooden legs. I’ll just have to figure out how to mend the large chip on the side. I’m sure you’ll see that again on the blog before long!

With that track record we had a high standard to meet, and we were not disappointed. At our first stop we took home this incredible chair for only $30! The color isn’t our first choice, and the fabric is a little worn, but that shape! And it can always be reupholstered down the line. We both wanted it bad, but it is in Sage’s living room because she actually has space for it (hmph, details).

Isn’t it a beauty? And we were even more thrilled when Sage found it online valued at $499.

I was also thrilled to find a set of 12 pieces from the same china pattern that I used to make my graphic planters, including two of the same bowls! I’m psyched to make more because they make excellent small gifts. I also just love the pattern (Octime Black by Arcoc). I’m not sure what I’ll do with the rest of the pieces yet.

I also picked up this glass display box for about $15. Pricey for a thrift trip, but a good deal given what these usually sell for. I use them to display Brad’s collection of Zuni Fetish carvings.

But what we were REALLY on the hunt for was more items that we could do as a paired project for this blog – showing how the same item can be re-imagined in different ways, like we did for the lamps. We didn’t find any identical items that spoke to us, although we kept our eyes peeled…

Thrift store shopping - Plaster & Disaster

(FYI, that marbling is painted.)

… but we did decide it would be just as fun to show two ways to makeover something that is really common at thrift stores: decrepit old cane chairs. We each picked out one we liked. Sage found this light wood one with pretty details, and a seat that still holds its shape. It is SUPER wobbly, however.

And I found this falling-apart one with a broken seat and missing pieces. Despite that, I love how delicate it is, and the pretty tone of the old, dark wood.

So stay tuned! We hope to share this dual makeover, and what we learn along the way, here on the blog ~~in the coming months~~ whenever we get around to it.

As we think about what we might do with our dilapidated cane chairs, we thought we’d share some inspiration from across the blogosphere of projects that re-imagined other ubiquitous thrift store items that most of us tend to pass right by. So I’ll turn it over to Sage to share some of the favorite projects that we’ve found!

As fun as thrift store shopping is, you are wading through a lot of junk. For example, this excellent collection of knives and cutlery…

But remember: just because the incredible discoveries are few and far between, doesn’t mean that there aren’t some awesome projects to be done. It just takes some creativity to see past the surface — and even the original function — and imagine the possibilities.

There are a lot of thrift store reupholstery projects out there that just don’t speak to me, and I probably would have said that anything involving an old office chair would end up in that category. Until I saw what Liz at love grows wild pulled off. (please pin from original source)

Mandie from Mid Mod Inspirations reimagined this candle holder as a colorful and chic jewelry tray. So clever! (please pin from original source)

Roeshel at DIY Showoff added turquoise paint to a generic wood mirror to create a bold color-blocked look. You had me at “turquoise paint”…. (please pin from original source)

Jamie at Anderson + Grant turned bud vases into gorgeous distressed candlesticks. I feel like I always see so many of these bud vases at thrift stores and can never think of a creative use for them. Even more if you throw in milk glass vases, which I bet would work for this project too. (please pin from original source)
Beat up serving trays are everywhere at thrift stores, and even though I always think “I guess I could paint that?” I never feel like I have an idea really worth doing. Enter Chelsea at Making Home Base to inspire me with this stenciled octagon tray. So easy, so awesome! (please pin from original source)

We don’t have any other furniture projects in here because good furniture can be especially hard to reliably find, but I think we’ve all seen some variation of this bookshelf in countless Goodwills. Not mid-century enough for you? (when is anything, ever?) Just add some tapered legs from the hardware store like Sussy Crafts did, and round it out with gold-striped paint job. (please pin from original source)

And lastly, turning broken china into colorful garden stones? This one is pure genius in my opinion. To be fair, it’s not an actual thrift store project — Lisa at Over the Big Moon came up with the idea after her collection of teacups and saucers from her grandmother were accidentally shattered. But teacups abound in thrift stores, so you could easily recreate this project without having to destroy any family heirlooms. (please pin from original source)
Okay Naomi, we need to go thrifting again immediately. This time we’re intentionally buying what seems like junk and forcing ourselves to get creative with it!

Makeovers using common thrift store junk -- Plaster & Disaster

From love grows wild, Mid Mod Inspirations, DIY Showoff, Anderson + Grant, Making Home Base, Sussy Crafts, and Over the Big Moon

(Sharing at A Bowl Full of Lemons, I Heart Naptime, DIY Showoff, and Whimsy Wednesday)

Can we stop for a moment and talk about how jealous I have been of Sage’s beautiful gallery wall? It’s not so much that I wanted her gallery wall to be mine, but that I was feeling very inadequate and not-blogger that I had been living in this house for two years without completing one of my own. I think Sage probably hung hers within the first 5 hours of moving in, because she is a real blogger.

But feelings of personal deficiency aside, let’s back up for a moment and visit my living room as it was when Brad and I bought it – think dull, dark, beige, green, and creepy.

Our renovation with new floors, windows, and trim, and our painting and decorating, brought us pretty far, but there were still several major things that needed to be done in the room. Take this picture which used to be in my house tour…

… and let me point out to you the random holes in the walls where I need duct covers, the dinky light put in during construction that still needs to be replaced, and the random pieces of brown paper taking up residence amid the actual artwork on my wall.

Okay, so those first two things are still issues, but let’s focus on what this post and this blog are really about: the awesomely awesome things I do to make my house prettier.

The hold-up with the gallery wall was a good one – right in the middle of planning and hanging my original layout, Brad gave me a super awesome Solstice gift: “Head of a Crocodile” by Reinder Oldenburger.

Gallery Wall - Head of a Crocodile Painting by Reinder Oldenburger see reinderoldenburger.com - Plaster & Disaster

“Head of a Crocodile” by Reinder Oldenburger (check out more awesome paintings on his website and you can buy them here)

Brad is a really good and thoughtful gift-giver, and he has turned into a remarkable one since he learned how to access my pinterest boards to scope out what I am pinning. I had pinned several paintings by Reinder Oldenburger, and Brad looked him up and picked this one out for me. I LOVE IT. I love the colors, the shapes, the contrast, and most of all his funny nose (the crocodile’s, not Brad’s).

He (Brad) had planned it to go in my office/dressing room (where the colors would look great with the teal paint) but I really wanted a painting this awesome to go where it would be seen by anyone who visits our house. So I put the whole gallery wall question on hold while I got the canvas stretched and framed.

Most of our frames are silver, and I like that consistency because it means I’ll be able to move pieces around more easily in the future. But for this painting I wanted to do something a little special, and so I chose a floating frame that is silver on the front but black on the inner and outer edge for a little more definition. They installed it so it came out a little farther than the canvass, so some of the inner black edge would show.

Once it was done, we tweaked the original gallery wall layout to feature it prominently. I considered several layout options, including some with smaller items mixed in, but eventually decided on a casual layout using mainly large items.

Sage’s gallery wall uses many small pieces of artwork, and I do love that look. In fact, if you’ll tolerate some poor-quality-cell-phone-photos-from-the-past, I can show you the layouts I used in my old apartment. In the living room I anchored a lot of small pictures with a few medium sized items in the center, and then broke up the pattern with a few hanging items.

In my bedroom, I just used a lot of small items, but brought in some unusual shapes to stop it from feeling too boxy.

Man, that photo quality is unconscionable. But suffice it to say that I do love the look of lots of small pieces forming one large gallery wall – or, as I called them back then before I had discovered blogs and decorating magazines and learned that there are real terms for such things, “picture blobs.”

However, given all the crazy bright colors and details already in my living room, and the colorful artwork, I decided that a spread of large artworks would be best. This layout had a few great selling points. For one, Brad didn’t need to move many of the paintings that had already been hung, saving him work and our wall more holes. Also, it “incorporated” our eyesore-of-a-thermostat, helping it blend in and look intentional. Here it is!

I am still mulling whether this is perfect for the long-term, but it is great for now. I think I love it, but it is less symmetrical than I usually go for so it may take some getting used to.

What I know that I love is that I get to incorporate many meaningful pieces into the display. I’ve already gone on-and-on about the crocodile painting, so let me say a few words about the others.

On top is a print that Brad and I randomly bought at the SoWa Market in Boston a few years ago. We were wandering and shopping with my friend Tasha, and just kept coming across fun old prints that we liked. We got this one, which is all in Russian, for something like $15, and I got it framed about a year ago when I was framing a bunch of other pieces. If only I had known about Sage’s DIY mat cutting trick back then! This will move off this wall when we find another print or painting that we really love, but for now it is doing a pretty good job filling this space.

On the right, you can see the amazing Dali lithograph (Vanishing Face) that Brad’s parents are lending us from their home. What a beautiful thing to see every day. I just adore the lines of it and how much fun there is hiding in this image! And of course the bright, primary colors are exactly the tones we’re using so much of in our house.

The top print is from Brad’s grandmother. She has an impressive collection of Japanese screen prints, which we always admire when we visit her for Christmas. They range from nature-based scenes to totally abstract shapes and patterns. I find them fascinating. She has been kind enough to gift us two, and this image of gold and purple birds is one of them. I wish we could have hung the other one in this layout, too – it is big and red and beautiful – but space didn’t allow it (it is slated for the hallway, instead).

Below that is Rosa Luxemburg. My parents met in college, and after they graduated they headed off to work as community organizers in Chicago, living in crummy apartments with a big German Shepherd named Beast, eating peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese for dinner. They didn’t spend a lot of money or time on interior decorating, but they did buy this poster and have it inexpensively framed under some sort of shrink-wrap plastic. Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish socialist of Jewish descent. She co-founded the Spartacus League, which became the Communist Party of Germany, and was eventually captured and killed, becoming a martyr. My parents gave it to me when I got my first apartment during college, and I’ve had it up ever since. My mom and I took it to be re-framed last year.

Finally, to the left is a Lichtenstein print that I got from a museum gift shop (I think it was the Museum of Modern Art in New York) when Brad and I had been dating for only a year or so. You may not be able to read it, but she’s saying “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!” I think it is hilarious, although Brad doesn’t agree.

Forgive this odd angle and strange lighting, but this is the only way to show how the colors in the gallery wall pick up the rest of the house — particularly the deep gold tone that we chose to paint our doors. I love that the reds pick up my chair and our dining room rug and the yellows pick up our doors. Maybe all this insanity is actually starting to make sense.

Or not. This room still has a long way to go, but right now it’s a really happy, cozy, colorful place to be – so that’s something. When picking our couch and rug, I reconciled myself to those sensible, staple pieces by telling myself that the art alone would make this room fun. I think it does!