The Interior DIYer
#DarkRomanticLuxe

Secondhand Victorian style* mirror

There was a huge amount of excitement yesterday as one of the key pieces for my One Room Challenge finally arrived! Our new [to us] secondhand Victorian style mirror and you guys, it’s incredible.

This is another perfect example of the first point in my blog post for my top tips for buying secondhand items online; looking past the pictures. The below was the photo uploaded onto Kijiji for the mirror. It wasn’t a great photo and because of that, people didn’t even bother to check it out [or zoom in on the photo to see how beautiful it is, as I did about a thousand times].

First of all, I found this mirror last year when I was looking for a mirror for our hallway [and I ended up getting this one]. I did a search for ‘vintage mirror’ on Kijiji and I did what I almost always do; I looked at every listing, right to the last page. And that’s where I found this Victorian style mirror.

I originally saw it advertised in October 2017. I called the owner and we had a long chat about the mirror. The owner had placed a bid on one of those storage units that so many TV shows are based around. He placed a bid, won the unit and found this behemoth mirror [among other things] inside. The mirror alone was originally bought for something like $700, but the owner lost interest in the storage unit and that’s how it came up for auction. This is then when the man now selling it hinted that the mirror had been advertised online for almost a year.

A year.

I sat and thought about it. It was and epic mirror, but at the time we had just moved to Canada and we were sleeping on the floor, so I couldn’t really prioritise it over buying essential things for our home. Like you know, groceries and milk for Cora and mattresses. So I waited. And thought about it. A lot. And really just waited for an appropriate amount of time to pass until I could buy it.

After Christmas I went looking for the mirror in my bookmarked tab but it was gone. I was heartbroken, but I also figured it was too good to be true and a little bit that it just wasn’t meant to be.

Then, ahead of the One Room Challenge, I started looking on Kijiji for a mirror in mid-February and to my absolute surprise, there it was. The Mirror. It had been relisted! I immediately called the owner again. He remembered me and we struck a deal; I would take the risk of buying the mirror without seeing it if he could guarantee the mirror was not broken or scratched, it had proper hanging equipment on the back, the frame was in good condition and that the giant plaster frame was not warped in any way. The owner lived an hour away and it was still the middle of winter here in Ottawa at the time, so we agreed he would deliver it once the snow had gone.

Want to take a guess how much I paid for it?

$100.

Plus delivery.

I’m not a monster. The man lived an hour away.


Juniper for scale.

He delivered the behemoth mirror yesterday as promised and it did not disappoint. It is equal parts epic and beautiful and I woke up in a panic last night about how we’re going to safely hang the damn thing because it weighs more than an adult human [I’m going to contact a few art galleries and hardware stores and get their advice. This is the most adult I’ve ever felt].

I have to stress that my hurried photos do absolutely no justice to the detail on it and the finish. It’s really beautiful. And to give you a full idea of how big it is, it’s 50″ / 4ft tall and 60″ / 5ft wide. This thing is incredible. I cannot wait to hang it up.

EDIT: I called a professional art installer and they suggested French cleats to hang the mirror securely – something I thought of but never knew the name of! Fingers crossed.

*I have no idea if it’s a Victorian style or not. I called the last one a Baroque style mirror, so this one is being called a Victorian. But in all seriousness, if you do actually know the style or era this mirror is modeled after, I would love to know! I’m fairly clueless with dating things like this. I have Googled it, but Google isn’t great with dating “giant fancy funny shaped mirrors”.

#DarkRomanticLuxe

One Room Challenge Spring 2018 – Week One!

The Interior DIYer - One Room Challenge Spring 2018 Week One!

I am very excited and a bit nervous today to share that I’ll be participating in the Spring 2018 One Room Challenge as a guest participant! It’s something I’ve followed year after year and I’m excited to finally be participating this year. For anyone who found me here thanks to the ORC, hello! I’m Alex and I’ll be redesigning the dining room in our rented apartment here in Ottawa over the next six weeks as part of the Spring 2018 ORC.

We’ve been living in our Lower Town apartment in Ottawa for six months which has given me plenty of time to think of design ideas and decide on what I’d really like to do with our dining room. To give you an idea of what I’ll be working with, here is our dining room as it is right now …

The Interior DIYer - One Room Challenge Spring 2018 Week One

It’s the brightest room in our apartment and also where Cora and I spend most of our day. It’s the biggest room and I did think about maybe tackling a smaller room for my first ORC, but we spend so much time here as a family that it made the most sense to update it first. We’ll also have guests staying with us over the next few months so it’ll be a [more] welcoming space for them.

I’m hoping to source as many secondhand pieces as I can for this challenge. I will be getting some brand new pieces, but I’ll be putting a lot of thought into each piece before buying it. So starting from the top down, here’s an outline of what I’m planning on doing to our dining room! …

Change the lighting
I luckily already have a secondhand chandelier ready for our dining room. It’s very similar to our living room chandelier but bigger. I’ve been patiently waiting for the day when we can take down the track lighting in here as this cluster does absolutely nothing for this room.

Paint the ceiling
It’s not as intrusive as you might think, but it’s time for peachy ceiling to go. I have leftover ceiling paint from updating our living room so I’ll use up the remainder of that.

Paint the walls greige
It’s taken me a while to come to terms with it, but I’m a big fan of greige [grey + beige]. I like neutral walls but I’m not very comfortable with stark white or cold greys, and greige is just the right mix of neutral and warm I’m looking for this room.

Burgundy focal wall
There’s an opportunity to make one of our hall walls [seen below] a focal wall as part of my dining room update. It’s a dark area so I’ll be embracing it and painting the wall burgundy with the leftover paint from our living room.

Contact paper dining table
We inherited the dining table from the previous tenants in our apartment. It truly is a beautiful table, but it’s seen better days; the legs are scratched and painted different colours and the top is dotted with spilled red nail polish, coffee stains [that I can’t remove] and has a finish I’m not in love with [the knots are too dark for my liking and I’m not keen on the pattern]. So instead of buying a new table, I’ll be painting the legs and covering the top with faux marble contact paper [like what I did with our coffee table].

New seating
We bought our dining chairs secondhand and they have not held up well. Along with my persistent hip problems, I can’t sit in them for very long without immediately regretting it. And they’re falling apart. The chairs, that is. And my hips too I guess. So I’m on the lookout for well made chairs with a bit of a modern design, or possibly two chairs and a bench? I’m still open to options.

Large vintage mirror
Just wait until you see the beauty of a mirror I found on Kijiji. Once the walls are painted I have the tall task of safely securing it to one of the walls without bringing the entire building down.

Paint the dining hutch
I found this beautiful hutch on Kijiji for just $30 a few months ago. The wood finish is terrible so I have no hesitation painting it with Fusion Mineral Paint‘s shade of Coal Black and distressing the finish a little to make it a little less perfect.

I have so many more details and ideas to add to the space, but for now I threw together the below to give you an idea of how I’m hoping our dining room to feel. I’ve been hoarding little thrifted treasures for this project for what seems like forever, so I really can’t wait for all my ideas take shape! I’m still in the excited stage and waiting for the WTF were you thinking trying to do this in 6 weeks with a toddler underfoot? stage to set in. Give me a day or two and I’ll be panicking.

Check out the full list of Guest Participants here! I should have stayed up and added my link when the link-up went live, but I slept through my alarm 😅 #MomProblems

Week One – Week Two – Week Three – Week Four – Week Five – Week Six

Environmental Resolution

My top tips for buying secondhand items online

It’s no secret that I love finding a good secondhand bargain both in real life and online. Whenever I share my latest Kijiji finds I always get asked about how I get so lucky with the things I’ve found. Some of it is luck, yes, but I’ve also fine tuned a few methods over the years and that got me thinking about what I would include if I wrote a post about sourcing secondhand items online. I’ve narrowed it down to four main points which I hope will be helpful to all my fellow thrifters out there! Unless you live in Ottawa; go away. I want all of the things for myself.

I use Kijiji here in Canada, but in Ireland I used to use Adverts to find all kinds of household items, so these tips can easily be used while surfing Adverts [though the messaging system is different and there’s an added evaluation system (which I sometimes wish was available on Kijiji)]. My top tips are …

Click through to four top tips for sourcing secondhand pieces online! #Secondhand #Thrifted

Look past the pictures
We all have our strong points. For some people, taking and / or uploading photos is not even in the same hemisphere as their strong points. I’m not looking to shame people here because I know and understand not everyone is tech savvy, but what I am saying is that this is an area where you can get really lucky. Joe takes a photo of the photo on his phone and uploads the picture of him holding his phone instead of uploading the photo directly from his phone. It’s photo inception. It’s not an ideal picture but the item for sale in the photo itself is exactly what you’re looking for. Because the photo quality isn’t great, it’s amazing how many people won’t even bother to click into the ad to see more. This is where you can pounce. You’ve got to see past the photos and see the items potential.

For example, this is a photo of four chandeliers I found on Kijiji advertised at $40. The photo is uploaded sideways and doesn’t even show the full chandeliers. BUT, I had just bought our secondhand Kijiji chandelier a few weeks previously and this was the same style chandelier. I asked the seller if it was possible to see the full chandelier, they sent me a photo of it held up, and it was perfect so I went for it [the other three chandeliers are much smaller, but they’re still perfect fixtures for our other rooms].

Broaden and simplify your search terms
If you’re looking for something really specific like a storage bench for your hallway, if you search for ‘storage bench’ or ‘hall bench’ then you’re going to miss out on the people who are advertising their item just as a ‘bench’. There are people who aren’t interested in writing detailed summaries for products so try to think of a few alternative key words for what you’re looking for. Be less specific. ‘Bench’ and even ‘ottoman’ are good words to start with for this example. Someone may have been using a storage bench as an ottoman so they’ll list it as an ‘ottoman’. Yes, you’ll have to look through a lot more advertisements, but you’ll have access to much more and it will increase your chances of finding what you want.

Compromise / do some DIY
If you’re looking for something specific for your home [ie – a dresser], try not to narrow down your options in your mind before you start. If you’re looking for a green dresser with 8 drawers and brass handles for your dining room, chances are you are not going to find that exact thing. Compromise by deciding what you really want and what you can possibly DIY. If the number of drawers is really important to you, then concentrate on the number of drawers when you’re browsing and consider painting a dresser green yourself and sourcing some brass handles. Or the other way around; if you don’t like the idea of painting a dresser, then keep an eye out for green dressers but you might need to compromise on how many drawers the dresser has or what size and shape it is. Figure out ahead of time what you want to prioritise and be open to having to compromise.

Be a human person
My final point is a pretty basic one but one that I’ve dealt with as a buyer and a seller; be a human person. When you’re messaging someone about a piece, don’t be one of those people who just writes “I’ll swap you one of the items I’m selling for this” because you’re not going to get a reply. In your first message to a seller say you’re very interested in their piece, you’re thinking of putting it in your living room and you’re wondering if it’s still available. And ALWAYS write your name at the end of the message [there’s nothing I find more frustrating then not knowing who I’m dealing with]. Be personable.

For our secondhand French provincial sofa and armchair, I explained we had just moved to Canada and didn’t have any of our own furniture, I was in love with that style of sofa and I’d love to one day reupholster something like that. The seller gave me her number, we had a long chat and even though there were other people interested who could collect the set before I could, I got it because I was a human person with her. The same when I spoke to the guy I bought Cora’s baby grand piano from; we LOLed about toddlers. Even our current Lower Town apartment; I called [our now] landlord and was upfront with her about our situation and they held the apartment for us for nearly two months. No, you’re not swindling people. You’re just being real. You’ll get more of a positive response from people if you show you’re a real person, you’re honest with them and not a total douche bag.

I know they’re not ground breaking tips, but these are a few of the methods I use almost every time I’m browsing for a certain piece for our apartment [or as it happens, an apartment itself]. I hope they’ve been somewhat helpful for you! But what about you; do you have any tips or methods that have worked for you over the years when it comes to online thrifting?

Click through to four top tips for sourcing secondhand pieces online! #Secondhand #Thrifted