Thrift the Look – Vintage Lake House Decor

Hello Friends and welcome to a brand new blog series – Thrift The Look!  To say that I am excited about this collaboration is a big fat and massive understatement!

Insert the emoji of the  flamenco dancing lady in the red dress HERE!

Why the over the top excitement (shocking for me, I know), I’m friggen SO excited because I’m joining in with my vintage loving friends,  you may already know us as the crew over at our Facebook group – Creative Vintage Darlings! Don’t know about that group you say? Well if you’re a vintage loving obsessed person, like us – then hustle your little tush on over there. I like to call us, the enablers! haha We really will NEVER talk you out of that thrift store score! 😉

You can join our free Facebook group here –> Creative Vintage Darlings 

Now, on to the rest of the post!

Thrift The Look

This series is the brain child of my bud Sarah, she blogs over at Sadie Seasongoods and her very first, “Thrift the Look” was, French Farmhouse Decor from the Thrift Store.  She really had fun with her first, Thrift the Look and was pretty happy with how her readers LOVED it as much as she did – she decided to invite some of her vintage loving friends along for the thrifting ride. When she asked us we all yelled – YES!!!! I told you we’re #thriftingenablers!!!  The concept is pretty self explanatory  but very basically, we choose a theme (this time it’s Vintage Lake house) then an image or images from the webz that support the theme or vice versa.  Once we have our inspiration we go thrifting!!! Then we share how we each accomplished the look or style with our thrift store finds!! I love this concept because even though all of us are looking at the same images, we are all inspired by this exercise so differently. The creativity and inspiration in this series, let’s just makes me a very happy (vintage) camper! Speaking of inspiration… 

Vintage Lake House

Image Source

For this, Thrift the Look – we are going with some vintage lake house inspiration.  Bud and I don’t currently own a house by a lake (YET), but there is NO harm in pretending… especially if you love the coastal vibe, am I right?!  Besides, thrift the look is more about the look and feel of something rather than copying something item for item or having the exact “perfect” location. I can’t tell you how many times I’m asked, “How do you know what to pick up when you are at the thrift store”? So many people find a trip to the thrift store very overwhelming and with this series, our collective hope is to help you with that feeling (I mean if you actually have that feeling – HA). You can see all of the brilliant ways my friends have thrifted their looks at the end of my post, I know there will be A LOT of inspiration and tons of ideas how to be less overwhelmed at the thrift store and create the look you desire. YAY!

If you want to read more about this awesome home in Maine (our inspo) you can see the whole article here – > CountryLiving – Maine Fixer Upper 

How I Thrifted the Look

How I approached this challenge – Let me try to break down how my creative process works. I chose to focus on the elements that I loved about our inspiration photos – choosing to have the things you LOVE in your home is the best way to not feel overwhelmed at the thrift store. I usually ask myself – can I make this work? By, leaving it as is? By, painting it a different colour? – or – By, using it in an unexpected way? I sometimes carry an item I’m attracted to around in my cart and think about it for a bit. And I usually walk away if the price tag is crazy, unless of course I am madly in love with something… usually that’s not the case though. 😉 I did pay a little more than I wanted to for one of the items below, can you guess what item I paid “too much” for?

Since we have a very clear theme for this post I just couldn’t leave these items behind.  I ended up buying 4 things in total for this challenge (3 are shown above) and the rest of the goodies that I’ve vignetted were things I already owned – shopping my home (another one of my favourite activities) is a really good way to change things up and create a look or style that may be new to you, think outside of the box a bit and have fun using the things you already own in a different way. PLAY!  Most all of the things I own and lug home were at one time or another thrifted! haha

Some of the elements that spoke to me about our inspiration images…

Colour

I love the white inspiration photo, I love how bright and clean it looks and the contrast with the green – swoon! I usually LOVE all the wood so I was surprised that I leaned more towards the white image. Really though both images have inspired me, green and wood tones are so lovely together, right? That’s the direction I decided to go.

Lots of green and wood, don’t mind if I do!

Texture

I was out thrifting once and came across a box of twine – this box of twine was slated for the garbage (FREE – my favourite price)… the twine is very simply wrapped around pieces of cast-off wood, I imagine it was once used for mending nets maybe, or kept in a toolbox for just the right time?! Regardless, I love all of that texture and the simplicity of reusing things!  That is one of the things I love the most about vintage, everything was used and reused, things just weren’t waisted or thrown out.

Netting has such a great texture too, it really speaks to a coastal theme too. I’ve been meaning to do something with this happy little pile of net… I think I’ve found just the right spot for it!

I found some beautiful textured rope in our storage… perfect! AND, give me all of the warm wood happily contrasted against the white – LOVE! I love that ship way up there too, I picked that beauty up for $5! 

I also really love the smooth texture of the sea glass displayed here and the colours are perfection!  Books are another fantastic way to bring that texture & colour into your vignettes. I love displaying the spines of some books and the pages of others – can NEVER go wrong with picking up vintage books while you thrift. 

Shape

One of the other things that stood out to me about the white inspiration image was shape. Round is a very strong design element here and I tried to focus on that while out thrifting. It was a very happy accident that I found all the round things… 

I LOVE the green vintage McCoy pottery sitting proudly on top of those leather bound books and that yummy texture – I’m all heart eyes…I felt it needed a little something though. While I was cleaning up my office (very rare occasion) and I plopped a vintage wooden nut bowl in there as a way to, pile and carry. I LOVEd the contrast right away, so that’s how it’ll stay – maybe until I clean up again. Hahahah – so for a long time – in other words! I also dig how the bowl looks round, win and win! A round plate with a ship motif – kind of a no brainer while I was out thrifting! The black binoculars… I love the concave lenses and the reflections in them – they just “fit”. I adore how the round element touches almost all of the items I’ve assembled in this white cabinet. It’s fantastic when a plan comes together! 

Nautical knickknacks – modified

In all honesty I was struggling to find any truly nautical knickknacks (at first)… BUT I did come across some glass ashtrays that are shaped like a ship’s steering wheel. I had NO idea how I was going to use them, I thought, maybe paint? When it was time to use them I realized I didn’t want to paint them, then an idea struck. I thought a ship’s silhouette would look kind of cool “framed” by the steering wheel (like the one in our inspiration image). In a nutshell I very simply mod podged some silhouetted ships from some free clip art in behind the glass… I really love the way they turned out, easy and inexpensive and I feel they reenforce the nautical theme, especially with the jute tied onto one of the handles for hanging.

Padlocks and leather bound books, very lake house, right?

 

This sweet little propeller is on “loan”… I borrowed this from the shop –  okay it was on an actual engine in the shop – but that’s just a technicality. It’s an engine we haven’t used yet – sooooo. HA HA – I think I’ll be on the lookout for one that I don’t have to give back… hmmm, or maybe I can tell him I lost it? Cute, right?

One of my all time favourite gifts from my Son, this light fits in perfectly with our nautical theme.

One of the things I enjoy the most about this vintage lake house look is this map I found in my stash… it was rolled so the map part was hidden, I decide to roll it “inside out” and just lean it against the cabinet – perfect. 

I could keep going, seriously I had so much fun thrifting the look and I can NOT wait for our next thrifting adventures! I really hope you enjoyed this as well, I am also hopeful that you will find inspiration to get to that thrift store and thrift your own look! xo 

Now please go see how the rest of the team, thrifted the look.

HomeToHeather.com | Sadie Seasongoods  | Virginia Sweet Pea | Postcards from the Ridge 

 

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