1920s cottage redecorated on budget

[MrBern]

Priced out of NYC, this couple bought a first home in the Catskills. Vintage & retro redecoration on a budget.

slideshow:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/01/dining/20090702-catskills-slideshow_index.html

full story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/garden/02catskills.html

 

[JoeNiblick]

Thanks for posting this! It's always interesting to see what other people are doing. I'm working on my own fixer-upper, and I'm always struggling with maintaining the integrity of the house while staying within my budget.

 

[pdxvintagette]

Okay, I'm a snob...

But seriously, shabby chic crate "coffee table" and mis-matched chairs in the dining room? I don't know how this made the New York Times - there are so many photos right here on the lounge in the Vintage homes thread that are positively inspiring, better put together and more polished in presentation - and I know many of our members thrift, estate sale and bargain hunt at flea markets.

Also, we're talking about 700 sq. feet. Who couldn't do that on a budget?

Thanks for posting though, it is good to see what the "rest of the world" thinks of and looks to when they think of vintage lifestyle/decorating vintage.

 

[Viola]

700 sq. ft. is pretty big for NYC and their thriftstores are more expensive than here, I know that. *Crates* aren't cheap, sadly, in many places, anymore.

Actually I can find old coffee tables more easily than I can find good crates.

I like when dining sets don't all match (set meaning table, chairs, and a buffet or sideboard or china cabinet) but I like all the chairs to match, generally, though I've seen cute exceptions. Not usually ones I'd want for myself though. But the table doesn't have to match the chairs and whether or not they match each other they don't have to match the china cabinet, in my book, as long as the colours/styles look good together? [huh]

 

[Guttersnipe]

Yeah, shabby chic is pretty lame...

...those folks have some good stuff going, but they've obviously injected a little "country cottage distressed" stuff into every room, which just ruins it for me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

700 sq. ft. is pretty big for NYC and their thriftstores are more expensive than here, I know that. *Crates* aren't cheap, sadly, in many places, anymore.

Actually I can find old coffee tables more easily than I can find good crates.

I've been looking for a good coffee table for the entire ten years I've lived here -- the problem is, most of them are too big for my living room, which is about 10 X 12. I've ended up using a 19th century sea chest I found at a junk barn for $20. I suppose it'd be considered "shabby chic," although I hate that term -- but at least it's the real deal and not a "manufactured antique."

I use a Narragansett beer crate from 1945 to store my sewing supplies, so that, at least, is proper vintage. It had been kicking around my grandparents' house as long as I could remember, so I didn't have to pay for it -- but I've seem similar crates selling for over $50. They're very much in demand around here as storage for fireplace and stove kindling.

The refrigerator these Catskillians have is exactly the one we had when I was growing up. Except it wasn't -- ah -- quite so green.

 

[Viola]

A 19th C. sea chest sounds pretty cool to me, pics please? I don't know if it's too "beachy" for my non-New England self, though. I've seen lobster traps used as coffee tables in theme-y places but that's pretty silly here. (Maybe silly there, too, do true Yankees use those or only sell them to folks from away?) I don't think anybody more than an hour from the beach, like I am, has any business with lobster crates OR lighthouse themed tchotchkes.

Have you considered using an end-table as a cocktail table? Many of them are more appropriate scales than the jumbo islands some coffee tables seem determined to be.

I don't mind some things I've seen described as shabby chic, which have less emphasis on distressed and more on just a very feminine antique style, but its generally an awful lot of white/cream/ivory and rose prints and pink, and my guy doesn't want to live with any of those things. He really hates predominantly white rooms.

 

[Diamondback]

A 19th C. sea chest sounds pretty cool to me, pics please? I don't know if it's too "beachy" for my non-New England self, though. I've seen lobster traps used as coffee tables in theme-y places but that's pretty silly here. (Maybe silly there, too, do true Yankees use those or only sell them to folks from away?) I don't think anybody more than an hour from the beach, like I am, has any business with lobster crates OR lighthouse themed tchotchkes.

What's wrong with an inlander with an interest in ships and the sea having a "nautical room"?

----------------
Now playing: History Channel Club - 1812 Overture
via FoxyTunes

 

[Viola]

Depends on what you mean by nautical. Scale models are rather different than lighthouse wallpaper patterns, to my eye.

And there's a lot of variation in themed "nautical" rooms and some are quite nice and others only look okay inland to me if you're running a seafood shanty.

It's the difference between richly polished teak furniture with bright brasswork, maybe a ship in a bottle on the mantle, and covering a wall in fishing net and hanging stuffed marlin and anchors off of it. IMO your theme should whisper, be something to be picked up, not immediately grab visitors by the retinas.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, my great-great-great grandfather was an actual sea captain from Nova Scotia, so I guess I get a pass on the occasional nautical-themed doodad around the house. Even though I can't swim and think lobster is the most overrated food there is.

I'll put up a pic of the sea chest as soon as I get a chance to take one. It's a simple low rectangular box about three feet long by a foot and a half wide, and about a foot high, with rusted-to-immobility casters on the bottom. When I got it I had a mind to paint it, but then that whole painted-anteeky thing caught on and I didn't want to be accused of following a trend, even though that trend was actually based on the way genuine New England summer cottages were usually decorated. Strictly an Old Money summah-people thing, though -- people like me never got inside unless we had a cap on our heads and a broom in our hands.

The lobster-trap-coffee table thing is very much an affectation for people from away. The closest we ever came to such is the tiny little lobster-buoy pull that hung from the light string in my grandparents' kitchen.

 

[Viola]

I think Pennsylvania has less leeway on nautical than anywhere in Maine does. Also no particular easy way to use the Western doodads I like too.

But the sea chest sounds cute and I look forward to the picture.

For all my stuff about vernacular local style, I'm moving overseas and probably taking a lot of my stuff with me, and its all second-hand thriftstore/junk finds...hopefully it looks charming in its new home abroad and people will wish they know where I got all those things? Meh.

 

[Paisley]

This is what I admire:

Every weekend, [from October until May], the couple drove two hours from their home in Brooklyn to the house, undertaking all of the necessary reconstruction themselves, except the re-roofing, which was done by a contractor. Both urbanites, neither had ever tackled a renovation before, but the project was thrilling to them.​

As a homeowner who has done a lot of DIY improvements, I take my hat off to them. I'm sure that converting a garage into a living room is no easy task. I really like how they fixed up their little house!

Re: regionality, I can do without broken wagon wheels and cow skulls and yucca plants in the front yard; my front yard is more of a riot of flowers in the English tradition. Inside, it's a total hodge-podge of old styles from Middle Eastern to Chinese to Queen Anne.

 

[Viola]

Haha, touche, hoist on my own petard: I love yucca and prickly pear and since it grows here even in our wet Eastern clay, I will not forsake it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here's the sea chest, in all its been-around-the-world-and-back-avast-ye-swabs glory --

As you can see, it'll never rate a photo spread in a Sunday supplement, but it was cheap and it does the job. Plus it doesn't even show the damage if my cat decides to scratch it.

It also makes for a very good place to store miscellaneous items -- right now it's packed full of magazines I need to go thru someday.

 

[miss_smith]

A 19th C. sea chest sounds pretty cool to me, pics please? I don't know if it's too "beachy" for my non-New England self, though. I've seen lobster traps used as coffee tables in theme-y places but that's pretty silly here. (Maybe silly there, too, do true Yankees use those or only sell them to folks from away?) I don't think anybody more than an hour from the beach, like I am, has any business with lobster crates OR lighthouse themed tchotchkes.

I've found, as a native New Englander, that most people reserve the nautical theme for their beach and summer cottages. I saw it in one of the mcmansions down the street from me, and it gets overwhelmingly fugly once it is used in a larger house. I plan to live in a smaller house, so my love for nautical is OK.
The only time I've seen people using the lobster crates either use them in a nautical style room. I think they'd be alright in a rustic farmhouse style though too, but they'd look plain weird with "normal" or modern furniture.

 

[miss_smith]

I use a Narragansett beer crate from 1945 to store my sewing supplies, so that, at least, is proper vintage. It had been kicking around my grandparents' house as long as I could remember, so I didn't have to pay for it -- but I've seem similar crates selling for over $50. They're very much in demand around here as storage for fireplace and stove kindling.

Hey! I grew up in Narragansett. Where did your grandparents get ahold of it?

 

[Paisley]

I've found, as a native New Englander, that most people reserve the nautical theme for their beach and summer cottages. I saw it in one of the mcmansions down the street from me, and it gets overwhelmingly fugly once it is used in a larger house. I plan to live in a smaller house, so my love for nautical is OK.
The only time I've seen people using the lobster crates either use them in a nautical style room. I think they'd be alright in a rustic farmhouse style though too, but they'd look plain weird with "normal" or modern furniture.

The previous owners of my 100-year-old house had a contemporary theme, and it just didn't work. My next-door neighbor has a mission style theme, which is the best I've seen around here.

 

[scotrace]

I doubt you'll find a better, cooler looking coffee table than that chest, Lizzie. That's fantastic! Such a thing would be priced out of reach in these parts.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hey! I grew up in Narragansett. Where did your grandparents get ahold of it?

I suspect, knowing my grandfather, that it was a leftover from the Knights of Pythias Summer Picnic. Lots of 'Gansett was consumed around here over many summers, right up to the mid-'70s.

I've used it for a lot of things in the time I've owned it -- it's been, in one dwelling or another, an end table, a night stand, a footrest, and a filing cabinet, but it's been a sewing box for quite a while now, and I suspect it'll keep that function indefinitely.

These sorts of crates are not inexpensive -- they used to be fixtures in everyone's garage, but since they became trendy, the prices have gone way up. Beer crates are less common than soda crates -- the most common in this size around here are Clicquot Club, Leary's Root Beer, and Moxie. The latter is even more popular than the supply can support, though, and there's a thriving flea-market industry revolving around taking modern-built blank crates, stenciling MOXIE on the side with black spray paint, and then banging them up with a hammer and sandpaper. Caveat Emptor.