Old Country Life Decorating ~ By someone who can't decorate. Reuse, Redo Don't Buy New.

This is the way I decorate. I'm not a good decorator, but I do try. I like the house to look homey and I like the country look or shabby chic.

I love buying items cheap and doing what I can with them. I really love old furniture. Whatever I can reuse I will use. I will redo a an old cabinet, dresser or table. Oh, don't get me it's not that I don't believe in new at all. There are times when you have no choice to buy new. When appliances go out your better off to buy new. They're energy efficient. New mattresses, I won't buy them from yard sales.

We have an old farmhouse that we are in the middle of remodeling and have been for three years.

This old chair is one of two that we picked up along the highway in Michigan. We were driving along on vacation when I spotted them. I yelled to my husband "stop". There they were sitting on the highway with $2.00 on them. They were dirty and torn.

Thank goodness someone was home and we bought them. Loaded them in our small car. Good thing I have an understanding husband.

This chair started out looking like the chair above. The chairs now with new fabric. I love them. The fabric is black and white plaid on the front and on the back of the chairs the fabric is yellow with tiny roosters. I have always liked the double colors of fabric on chairs or sofas. They're comfortable to sit in. I guess they're not worth recovering if they're not comfortable.

I didn't have the wood on the chair refinished because I like it the way it is.

It's cheaper having something upholstered then buying new and the frames are usually better made. Just be sure to buy your own fabric in fabric shops when it's on sale. That's what I did. I bought the fabric in a fabric shop. I was waited for the fabric to go on sale.

.If you buy your fabric from an upholster store the fabric is usually expensive. It's also expensive from a carpet, fabric and wallpaper store.

This is an old cabinet I bought for $3.00 and hung up in our kitchen. It has a roll top door. I painted it and my husband hung it. We don't have upper cabinets. We don't feel we need them because we have a large pantry but I thought this little cabinet looked so cute and country.

As you can see I collect roosters. My granddaughter counted 25 roosters just in the kitchen and livingroom area. I told her she would inheirt all of them.

You can pick-up old stuff anywhere, rummage sales, yard sales, garage sales, tag sales, anitque shops, in the paper, Goodwill, Church Thrift Shops. Dumpster Diving. A good way to get old stuff, when the trash pick-up has their spring and fall big pick-up. All kinds of things end up on the curb. Our landfill also has a big sale once a year, they sell things that to them is good stuff.

We had lots of old doors with this house so we used them. This one I painted with chalk paint so I would have a chalk board and hung it on our laudryroom. Chalk paint is handy to use around the house. I have a hub about chalk paint. If you feel like looking at your welcome to.

Old antique door knobs or handles also looke good. I didn't do this in the kitchen I kind of like throwing in some modern here and there. My bottom kitchen cabinet handles are very modern, stainless steel. I don't know if you can see them in the pictures. I like mixing modern with old. Modern items often look like items from years ago.

Our daughter bought a new house and in the garage of the house was this cabinet. She was going to throw it away but I took it and we hung it above our kitchen counter.

I'm sure my daughter thought we were nuts. She has a beautiful old home but she doesn't like the things I like.

She does like some anitques but not the same ones I like. She has anitque mirrors on her living room wall. It's very neat looking.

Here are pictures of both of these little cabinets above our counters in our kitchen. My husband put shelves up all around the kitchen. I have a large collection of kitchen items and I'm not ready to get rid of them. So this is how we display them. This kind of shelving is very popular in country decorating. It works well for a small house. It's also looks open and makes the kitchen look larger. I keep curtains off the windows to help with that open look.

I know your thinking dust, dust, dust, well it's not that bad and when we clean it all takes very little time. I like to rearrange it once it's cleaned. Which is kind of fun. I have items in the basement and sometimes I will change things completely if I'm tired of what I have displayed.

When I said I like a little modern thrown in we also did that with our counter tops. They are black tile with touch of different color glass tiles, colors in red, aqua, purple, blue and green. We have a black sink. Would have loved a farm sink but they are so expensive.

Our ceiling is old beams that were there and we left them like that. My husband added two hand made larger beams hollow inside for lighting.

An old chandelier we rewired and cleaned up and hung in our bedroom. My aunt gave me the chandelier. She bought it at a yard sale years ago. She couldn't find the crystals so I bought those off of eBay. My husband rewired for safety. I added the little shades.

This shelf is made from an old window a board on top for the shelf and metal lacy looking brackets. Mirror is put behind the window. Looks very country.

We also made a pot and pan holder out of a window when we first moved in here and had no place for our pans.

This house was owned by an old man, he passed away and the kids wanted to get rid of it. It had an old chimney running down the through the kitchen. We would have liked to save it but there was no way to do that.

The stairs to the second floor were mad like a ladder, terrible and hard to climb. The stairs going into the basement were also straight down. We had to redo all of that and redo the bathroom.

This old mirror I found at an estate sale. It was all by itself with a price tag of $3.00. I'm sure at one time it belonged to a dresser. It's my favorite. The kids called it the witche's mirror because it reminded them of Snow White. The witch in Snow White had a mirror something like this one. It really looks nothing like this one but that's what they thought.