We have just 2 weeks left before we leave this little house of ours. Before we go I want to blog a few of the last thrifty makeovers we have done. We didn’t really have any budget for proper overhauls but I HAD to find a way to make each room intriguing and quirky. Enter the whole thrifty universe of second hand – it is amazing what you can do with a few Saturdays spent charity shopping and car booting!
For me, it is all about first making a canvas by painting the walls plain and then creating little tableaus with objects you have found. I do sometimes get a bit distracted picking up tins and vases up and shifting them by centimetres or from room to room, especially if someone is coming to stay.
Our other spare room has mostly had lodgers in it while this box room has been for short visits from people. We’ve had some lovely guests stay – friends from New Zealand, Canada and the US, people that we’d stay up late talking with, who would inspire us with their creative, soulful living. A couple of friends stayed with us for a few months in there before they headed off to sail the sevens seas for a year. Pip was in a band and would fill the house with her beautiful ukelele melodies.
I made this old desk we found a little bit more interesting by painting lines on it with homemade chalkboard paint. The vintage Singer sewing machine on the right came from Oxfam while the one next to it was found in the street. The case was locked and we had a grand old time breaking in to it – would there be an actual machine in it? Or maybe just a mummified Victorian corpse? Both these machines date from the 1800’s – it was well exciting discovering how old they were on this website.
Time gave me this old washing board for my birthday one year – I know! Ha, I’d have been gobsmacked if he didn’t do ALL the laundry. I don’t even know how to use the washing machine. The C came from our local bakers in the greatest street find EVER. 
And this is just a little collection of gifts and jumble finds. (Most of which I don’t get to bring to New Zealand with us *cries into pillow singing Titanic to my vintage tins* Near… Far… Wherever you are…)
We haven’t done much to it but it has definitely been a transformation:
all for about twenty of your English pounds. It helps being okay with waiting for MONTHS to find the perfect wardrobe in a junk shop and feeling thrilled by coming across beds on the side of the road. (All our beds were streetfinds.) Secondhand life is the only life for us!
