All right, this is the fun part. You've seen the
big reveal of my "Parisian Chic" One Room Challenge. And I've shared that except for about 3 items, (the sofa of my own design and the coffee table and entry mirror which were both Ikea hacks) every single piece of furniture in that space was scrounged up on Craigslist and at thrift stores across LA.
On Monday I broke down
all the DIY wall art I made for the space. Now as promised, here's all the down-and-dirty makeover action. May you be inspired to see "trash to treasure" possibility wherever you roam!
I really love what these citron yellow chairs are doing in this dining room space. Here's how they looked when we found them on Craigslist ...
My inspiration was this dining space in one of my all-time favorite colorfully decorated homes, Christine D'Ornano's London Townhouse featured in Elle Decor ...
Once our Craigslist chairs were painted and re-upholstered they looked like this! Massive improvement, and quite like my inspiration image, if I do say so myself :)
I love that you can see the color of the bright fabric on both the front and the back of the chairs ...
The chandelier was another Craigslist score for under $200. You'll usually see them priced at $800+, especially venetian glass styles like this one, but if you take nothing else away from this post, remember that you just
never know what you are going to find.
That's why I love thrifting so much ... there's no logic or rhyme or reason. I snort-laugh when scrolling through dozens of Craigslist postings selling awful ugly crap that you couldn't give away for
free, and then I find this beauty for a fraction of what it should cost. And that's the thrill of the hunt!
The aubergine console table in the dining room looked like this when I saw it at the enormous St Vincent de Paul warehouse near downtown ... great lines, good scale, just in need of some paint.
It actually took me a lot of convincing to get my sister to go with the eggplant color for the console, but I kept showing her images of eggplant+chartreuse color schemes and eventually wore her down.
It
is kind of a weird combo though, and I'll admit that when I first saw the freshly painted aubergine table against the pink walls I hated it! But once it was paired with that beautiful mirror (an antique store splurge for $275), and our
grisaille wallpaper, it all came together ...
Another game changer in the space was a makeover of this ugly mauve floor lamp.
Again, I was inspired by the brilliant mix of traditional and modern in D'Ornano's London townhouse. See how brilliantly the funky mid-century Italian floor lamp combines with the rest of the ultra traditional decor?
Mid-century floor lamps cost a pretty penny, so I searched around for a version that could reasonably approximate the shape and style, and then I got to work with my spray paint. Gold on the base and glossy black on the shades, et voila!
I think it invigorates this corner of the living room and keeps all the traditional decor from looking too stuffy. Along with the black and white
DIY collage art, it strikes just the balance of trad and mod that I was trying to achieve ...
The big gold mirror, plaster bust, and the art deco accent table in that little corner were all thrift store scores too. (Or to be completely accurate, I bought the bust from a guy hawking them on the side of Santa Monica Blvd :)
The entry vestibule came together with yet more thrift store magic, plus an Ikea hack thrown in for the fun of it ...
I spotted the console table in a thrift store looking heinously shabby chic, but noticed that it had clean, modern lines and the surface was in fairly good condition.
This is a perfect example of paying attention to the shape and lines of a piece rather than an ugly finish. I had it professionally lacquered because I've got a refinishing guy who gives me great deals since I do a LOT of this, but it's not so hard to paint furniture oneself, and I've done that a ton too.
The giant Ikea mirror is a brilliant buy that I've used in numerous projects including
this master bedroom. The rubbed silver leaf finish it comes in is actually quite pretty, but for our purposes we needed gold ...
This space could NOT have achieved its "Parisian Chic" status without a super ornate and crusty gold gilt mirror. Those suckers aren't cheap, especially as big as I needed, so you know I breathed a huge sigh of relief when, out canvasing my Silverlake thrift stores (one day soon I'll devote an entire post to my favorite LA thrift and vintage shopping spots, I promise) I saw this ...
It's plastic not wood, hence the price tag, but it's exactly what was needed above the fireplace.
The wall sconces I scored right next door to the mirror guy (whose sign actually proclaims that he sells used refrigerators ... because you just never know where you'll stumble upon your next treasure.)
The antique English demilune bar cabinet was a bit of a splurge at $350, but a quick check on 1st Dibs gave me all the justification I needed. Plus I saved
so much on my purchases throughout the rest of the space!
If you follow me on
Instagram you might have caught the day I scored this $15 chippendale chair at Goodwill, after searching high and low for
ever and
just before I was about to pay $250 to a guy on Craigslist for the same thing!
And that, my fellow dumpster diving friends, is how you create a completely pulled-together and uniquely decorated space from purely second hand goods! Now have at it.
