Show us your vintage home!

[Studebaker Driver]

Wow, Fading! I am green with envy over those stacking BOOKCASES!
Great looking place! As much as I like your green window shades (because they match my complexion), but they block that great view!

 

[Fading Fast]

Wow, Fading! I am green with envy over those stacking BOOKCASES!
Great looking place! As much as I like your green window shades (because they match my complexion), but they block that great view!

Thank you so much. The stacking book cases are awesome - we love them. With a lot of Ebay - and other similar type of places - work, they were very reasonably priced. Since they were incredibly popular for many decades, many still exist.

If you walk into a high-end antique store, you'll pay up for them (I've been stunned by the prices), but if you do some homework on what you want and then source via Ebay, etc., they can be had at very reasonable prices. It did take us almost two years to accumulate all of them, but we, literally, saved ~75% off of the price they are in high-end stores.

It's so funny you mentioned the view. I'm at my desk now with the shades up behind me for light and my girlfriend came in a few minutes ago and said that with just a little imagination the view is very Edward Hopper like. I love old NYC buildings and am so happy we have this view (that many would find boring).

 

[AmateisGal]

At the request of a FL member, I just private messaged some "overall" shots of our home office. You've all seen must of this stuff individually, but thought I'd post the overall shots of our still work-in-progress room.

I have MAJOR bookshelf envy!

 

[Fading Fast]

I have MAJOR bookshelf envy!

I understand as we suffered from the same affliction for years and said we'd finally buy and build enough to hold all our books when we finally bought an apartment.

The neat thing (as I've mentioned before on FL) is that the bookcases pictured - which we think are incredibly cool - are not expensive because they were so popular back in their day there are still tons around.

For the first time in either of our adult lives, my girlfriend and I actually have room on our bookshelves to add (that was the plan). My God does that feel good (and my God am I a geek).

 

[HanauMan]

I also love books and have far too many! I had to get a carpenter to put up built in book shelves against the wall of my study to house them all in.

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I love my vintage style chair, just need to find a standing lamp now.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Shelves look great, chair is beautiful as is the cabinet - love the curved glass.

 

[AmateisGal]

I also love books and have far too many! I had to get a carpenter to put up built in book shelves against the wall of my study to house them all in.

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I love my vintage style chair, just need to find a standing lamp now.

What a great collection! I hope you find the perfect standing lamp. That will bring the room together!

 

[HanauMan]

⇧ Shelves look great, chair is beautiful as is the cabinet - love the curved glass.

Thanks, though not as nice as your cabinets.

I found it in a junk store, didn't cost me much. Though it looks vaguely Art Deco in style it is actually from the 1940s and is a piece of British Utility Furniture (cheap furniture made during, and after, WWII to replace stuff destroyed in the bombings). It is showing its age and cheap construction but I love it and keep all my treasures (or junk, as my wife puts it) in it and on display.

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[Hap Hapablap]

The computer is eight years old, so relatively speaking, that counts as an antique!

 

[AmateisGal]

The computer is eight years old, so relatively speaking, that counts as an antique!

Wow. Gorgeous! Really love the desk and the radio!

 

[Hap Hapablap]

Wow. Gorgeous! Really love the desk and the radio!

Thank you! There is a fellow up here in the Portland area who refurbishes 30s-40s radios of all shapes and sizes. They are beautiful.

 

[Hap Hapablap]

Some more photos

 

[alanfgag]

My office, mid century mostly...

 

[Studebaker Driver]

As life pulls inexorably in one direction, I struggle in the opposite direction to get back here.

Last Sunday, for the first time in a year and a half, I was able to visit some of my favorite friends and was rewarded with a pair of room portiers. I was grateful to get them and they looked great in the house from which they came. I tried holding them up in the doorway to see if I could sell myself on them in my house. The house is pretty specific and can be a difficult fit when adding stuff.

I just can't make myself love these. They're not bad in any way, the condition is like almost new, though they are easily 100+ years old. The rolling rings are NOS, the rod is original to the house, though from another room. Anxious and not at all confident, I hurriedly made some wire hooks and temporarily suspended the rod from the picture molding at the approximate elevation so I could look at them a few days. Well, it's Thursday and I am unsold. I guess I need to be either talked into them or talked down off this ledge. I don't want to miss a good addition, but I don't want to make a tragic blunder and realize it only after I drill holes and screw the rod brackets to my 1911 woodwork.

Without:

With:

The other thing I dragged home was a fireplace screen. It's likely 15 - 20 years newer than the house, but the colors work.

The curtains are bugging me.

 

[vitanola]

I like the IDEA of portieres in your cased opening,
And I like that particular set of portieres, but like you are not entirely sold on that set in that room. Perhaps time will help you acclimate to them. The color is nice and the texture is interesting.

 

[scotrace]

(I have no idea why this seems to be posting photos as doubles)

Arts & Crafts handmade game table with pegged tenon legs and checkerboard top.

One end of the built-in in the dining room and 1920s Victrola 210.

Other end of the dining room built in.

Morris Chair, half drum table.

 

[Studebaker Driver]

I like the IDEA of portieres in your cased opening,
And I like that particular set of portieres, but like you are not entirely sold on that set in that room. Perhaps time will help you acclimate to them. The color is nice and the texture is interesting.

Yes, Vitanola, exactly. I like the idea and I like the components, but together they add up to less than the sum of the parts. I've had them wired up for a week and I'm still cool to them. They make the living room seem smaller and they impede the flow (optical, only) from one room to the next, creating a useless pause. Both rooms seem smaller. They provide a great deal of detail to the living room, but they just seem untrue to the architecture. The house works better with that bare Craftsman sparseness. If the house was just a couple of years earlier (hit more gently with the Bungalow Stick), they would be an automatic sale.

I've done this with cars, too. I've found terrific pieces at swap meets, bought them and rushed home to hold it up to the intended car, only to be disappointed and indifferent to the effect. It wasn't as great as I thought. So I don't know. Maybe I'll leave them up until the room would look wrong to me if I took them down...

 

[vitanola]

Yes, Vitanola, exactly. I like the idea and I like the components, but together they add up to less than the sum of the parts. I've had them wired up for a week and I'm still cool to them. They make the living room seem smaller and they impede the flow (optical, only) from one room to the next, creating a useless pause. Both rooms seem smaller. They provide a great deal of detail to the living room, but they just seem untrue to the architecture. The house works better with that bare Craftsman sparseness. If the house was just a couple of years earlier (hit more gently with the Bungalow Stick), they would be an automatic sale.

I've done this with cars, too. I've found terrific pieces at swap meets, bought them and rushed home to hold it up to the intended car, only to be disappointed and indifferent to the effect. It wasn't as great as I thought. So I don't know. Maybe I'll leave them up until the room would look wrong to me if I took them down...

I was picturing the portieres in a room their time which might be less self-consciously "modern" than your Craftsman interior. They would, I think, look simply splendid in a room with some "period" furnishings (Colonial, Louis IV, Jacobean) of the pre-WWI days, or perhaps in a room which retained some large part of its furnishings from the days of Harrison or of Cleveland. They might also nicely complement a later 1920s Borax motif.

 

[EmergencyIan]

Arts & Crafts handmade game table with pegged tenon legs and checkerboard top.

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One end of the built-in in the dining room and 1920s Victrola 210.
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Other end of the dining room built in.
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Morris Chair, half drum table.
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Wow, Scott! Pretty neat.

- Ian

 

[Zachary]

The computer is eight years old, so relatively speaking, that counts as an antique!

Then have a look at this one: 18 years old and still working!

And here's a picture of my vintage writing desk:

Complete with stamps, slide rule, postcards, Pelikan fountain pen, several inks (Montblanc, Pelikan, Iroshizuku), leather goods by German quality firm ASL, wax and signet, and a cheap no-name Banker Lamp. The metal sign is genuine vintage, with "Plantagen Thee" meaning "Plantation Tea" (in pre-reform spelling that was in effect until 1901). Congrats to anyone who makes an educated guess about the currency of the bank note to the right.