Thursday, 12 October 2017

Vintage Furniture Store Paradise Valley AZ Way

By Eric Nelson


Furnishing a home can seem overwhelming. We all know it can be expensive. Many homeowners, especially new ones, may feel that they don't even know what they want. Visiting a vintage furniture store Paradise Valley AZ can help people find a style they like or pieces they can build a theme around. Shoppers will see unique things they just won't find in a warehouse full of brand-new stuff.

First, what makes a piece of furniture or an accessory 'vintage'? It must be of good quality, a fine example of its period. It must be at least thirty years old, while one hundred years may have passed since the item was new. It can be either handmade or mass-produced; there are many things considered collectible today that were made for tract houses in the fifties. If you find something you like, you can research it on your phone while you are standing in the store.

Anything over 100 years will be an antique and probably priced accordingly. Vintage pieces, in contrast, are often very affordable, especially if you have some ability to restore them yourself. Even if you need restoration help - if, for example, you find a charming pair of chairs but their seats are tattered - upholstering, slipcovers, new paint, or minor repair may still make a piece less expensive than new.

The other neat thing about good vintage pieces is that the better examples of a style will have been made with solid materials and craftsmanship often better than you will find in new things. A bureau may have a solid-wood back, not plywood, and the drawers could be on wooden runners rather than plastic. Pulls can be made of heavy bronze, with finer detail than you may see today.

Do you want to save the planet? Keeping older pieces out of the landfills is a worthy goal, so re-use and re-purpose things from yesteryear. You can luxuriate in exotic woods without worrying about cutting down the rainforest. Older finishes and fabrics will have long since off-gassed any harmful toxins, so you home's interior spaces will be healthier, too.

If you select pieces from dusty second-hand stores and thrift shops, you definitely won't find anything like them in the homes of your friends and neighbors. Your whole home could be a showcase for the fifties, with gently-used things that still function perfectly for today's needs. It's very absorbing to follow one style from furniture to accessories to the pictures on the wall. Even new fabrics can reflect earlier styles if you look carefully for what you want.

However, using pieces from different eras is fun, too. If you like different things, the chances are your guests will admire them, too. You can pull a room together with color, or perhaps you might highlight a particular material, like glass or your favorite cherry or maple woods. A glass coffee table from the fifties will go fine with a Depression glass bowl or a sixties lava lamp. Victorian tables can hold Art Deco statuettes and make a striking picture.

Think about getting your basic furnishings at an affordable price and then slowly developing your taste as you stroll through shop after shop. Once your eye is trained, you can find treasures at thrift shops, bargains at second-hand furniture stores, and unique pieces at specialty shops. It's amazingly fun to live with things that have a rich history of their own.




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